«, 




n>ONOHUE, MENNEBERRY & CO., F»ubllstiers, 

407-425 Dearborn Si., CHIC A GO. 



Series No. 49. Dec. 4, 1890. Issued Weekly. Subscription Pnce. $13.00 per year. Entered 
at Chicago P. 0. as Second-Class Matter. 



MICHELINE. 



By Hector Malot. i2mo. Paper. Illus- 
trated. 



" Hector Malot is one of the most charming French 
writers. Micheline is one of his strongest works, and 
the translation is good." — The Arkansas Gazette. 

"The theme of the story will recall the leading 
features of ' East Lynne. ' " — San Francisco Chronicle. 

The story, of course, is French, and has some 
peculiar features, but is one that any one can read. 
The characters are well drawn, and many parts of the 
book are very touching." — The San Francisco Morning 
Call. 

"The scenes are vivid from the start, and the inter- 
est is well maintained throughout." — The Rochester 
{N. F.) Union a?td Advertiser. 

"A happy translation of a charming French novel/' 
— Davenport Democrat. 

DONOHUE, HENNEBERRV & CO., Publishers, 

CHICAGO. 



NIGHT SCBNKS 



CITY IvIFK 



BY 

T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D,D., 

Author of "Crumbs Swept Up," "Around the Tea Table," 
"Sports That Kill," "Live Coals," 
Etc., Etc. 



CHICAGO : 
DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO. 
1891. 




PRINTED AND BOUND BY 

DONOHUE & HeNNEBERRY, 
- CHICAGO. 



AUTHOR^S PREFACE. 



The following discourses were stenographically reported, 
and by me revised for publication, expressly for the only 
authorized publishers. T. DeWitt Talmage. 



PUBLISHEE'S PKEFACE. 



In issuing this collection from our press we do it in the 
profound conviction that the Christian community and the 
great American Public in general will appreciate these soul-stir- 
ring discourses on the temptations and vices of city life, by Dr. 
Talmage as seen by him in his midnight explorations in the 
haunts of vice of New York City, with his exposure of the traps 
and pitfalls that tempt our youth from the path of rectitude. 
They are written in his strongest descriptive powers, sparkling 
with graceful images and illustrative anecdotes ; terrible in their 
earnestness ; uncompromising in denunciation of sin and wicked- 
ness among the high or low, sparing neither rich nor poor ; and 
are Dr. Talmage's best efforts in his earnest, aggressive warfare 
against the foes of society, every -page burning with eloquent en- 
treaty for a better, purer life, and are of intense, soul-absorbing 
interest to aU who look for the advancement and higher develop- 
ment of the human raae. This work is the only be vised and 
AUTHOBiZED publication of Dr. Talmage's sermons. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

A PKRSONAL EZPIiOBATION IN HAUNTS TIOS. 

Esekiel Commanded to Explore Sin in His Day— Dirine Commis- 
sion to Explore the Iniquities of Our Cities—" Wild Oats'*— Critl- 
ciam of Papers— Three Million Souls for an Audience— Houses of 
Dissipation — Moral Corpses — Cheapness of Furnishing — Music and 
Pictures — The Inhabitants Repulsive — Surrounded by Music — 
Youug Men From the Country— Triumph of Sin — Blood of a' 
Mother's Heart— Cannot Hide Bad Habits— Fratricide and Matri- 
cide— The Way of the Transgressor is Hard— Destroyed without 
Remedy. 29 

CHAPTER II. 

LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 

" Policeman, What of the Night ?"— Desperadoes In Jerusalem— 
King Solomon's Household— Night of Three Watches— Two Elders 
of the Church — Muscular Christianity — Pulpit Physical Giants — 
Spiritual Athletes— Thomas Chalmers — Deepest Moral Slush of 
his Time— Hue and Cry Raised—" Ye Hypocrites " — Men of Wealth 
Support Haunts of Sin — Gospel for the Lepers of Society — ^A Mo- 
loch Temple— Heads of Families— Public Officers— Obstacles in the 
Way— Dens of Darkness— The Men who have Forsaken their 
Homes. ....48 

CHAPTER III. 

THE GATES OF HBU*. 

Gambling Houses— Costly Magnificence Untnie— -Merciless Place 
—Twelve Gates — Impure Literature — Novelette Litcrature^—Wide 
Gate— The Dissolute Dance— First Step to Eternal Ruin— Indiscreet 
Apparel— Fashion Plates of the Time of Louis XVI.— Henry VIIL— 
Modest Apparel— Fashion Plate of Tyre— Alcoholic Beverage- 
License Question— Gates Swing In — Is there Escape ^— Practical Use 



viii 



CX>NTBNTI1 



of these Sermtms— Holy Imbecility— Christmas Kiglit at tlM Fann 
House— Poor Wanderer— "Oh I Mother.»» • W 

CHAPTER IV. 

WHaMiaA.TfAHD WHOMIMISBKDk 

Genesis xir: 10— American Cities— Devil Advertising Free Gratis 
—Purlieus of Death— Hard Working Classes Missed— Grand Trunk 
Railroad— Fortunate Young Men— Vortex of Death— Midnight on 
Earth— Sense of Piety— "Kept" Maelstrom of Iniquity— Aching 
Hearts— Fragments of Broken Homes— Miserable Copy of European 
Dissipations — Toadyism — Revolution Needed — Public Opinion- 
Police Complicity— Edward Livingstone— The Printing Press — 
John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, Five Oceans of Mercy—" Home» 
Sweet Home.** Tl 

CHAPTER V. 

nNDEB THE POLICE LANTERN. 

A Mighty City — Midnoon— Midnight— Clerical Reformen— Thck- 
Brave Charge — Mortal Fear — Tenement Houses — Ring the Bell- 
Flash tbe Lantern — Night's Lodging — Silken Purse — Hear I Hear!? 
—The Homeless— The Bootblack— The Newsboy — " You Miserable 
Rat" — New Recruits — New Regiments — The Shipwrecked — ^The 
Two Magic Lanterns — The Home — A Change of Scene — Another! 
Still Another 1 1— Flowers — Greenwood— Poverty — Coroner— Potters* 
Field— Close the Two Lanterns. 83 

CHAPTER VI. 

SATANIC AGITATION. 

Enemy of all Good—" Give me 500,000 Souls"— But a Short Time 
—Elevated Railroads— Crowded to Death— Underground Railroads- 
Castle Garden — Jenny Lind — Trinity — New York Dailies — Mighti- 
ness of the Press — " Nations Bom in a Day"— Exhaustion of Health 
—Newsboys Lodging House— Boys — Extra Romp and Hilarity- 
Over the Doorway — Savings Banks — Western Fever Among Them — 
Howard Mission — Good and Bad Amusements — Temptati<xi — "Come 
with Me"— Stinging Remorse— To Hesitate is to Die^ 08 

CHAPTER VII. 

AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASaiNB. 

The Attack— Night of Theft and Assassination— *n¥lio is my 



CONTENTS. 



iz 



Neighbor?" — Responsibility— Rogues* Gallery— Loaded Pistols- 
Show me Crime— Respect Crime Pays the Law— "A Den of Thieves** 
— Plans Matured — Liquors Poisoned Four Times — Their Modui 
Opwondt— $75,000 Check — Division of Spoils — Blackmailers— ^ 
Never Fear Them— A Principle Laid Down— Professionals— Dens 
that Excite only Pity— "You Must Dress Better*'— Crime the Off- 
spring of Political Dishonesties— Immense Cost of Crime— Grace- 
No Admittance— Two Incidents— A Second Deluge— Mercy.. . . .112 

CHAPTER VIIL 

OLUB-HOUBB&— LEGITIMATB kSQ ILLEaiTIMATB. 

Two Armies— Sword Fencing— Unlucky Clip— An Honest Hi». 
toiy of Clubs— Leading Clubs of Europe — Of America— Their 
Wealth — Membership — ^Fumishing — Fascination of Club Houses — 
Another Style— Flushed Face—" Chips " Test their Influences— Gen- 
erous at the Club, Stingy at the Home Circle— Thousands of 
Homes Clubbed to Death— Epitaph— Effect on Your Occupation— 
A Third Test— A Vital Question— The Little Child's Influence— The 
Three Stranda— Pull for Your Life 128 

CHAPTER IX 

POISON m THE CALDKON. 

The students of Gilgal— Gathering Herbs— Death in the Pot- 
Iniquity must be Roughly Handled — Its Hiding Place — ^A Good 
Home is Deathless in its Influence — Unhappy Homes are Blood 
Relatives to Crime and Rascality — Occasional Exceptions — ^An In- 
dolent Life— The City Van— Four Ways of Getting Money— An In- 
cident— How to Depreciate Real Estate — Warning from Gladstone— 
The Marriage Day— The Scene Changes— Leaving the Farm House 
—Anxiety of Parents— The End— Put Back Now I.. . , 140 

CHAPTER X. 

THB ,CART BOPB INIQUITT. 

Construction of a Rope — No one can Stand Aloof— Honest Gam- 
bling Establishments— An Introduction to> First Class One — Second 
aass— The "Roper In"— Policy— "Saddle"— "Gig"— "Horse"— Ex- 
change — Desire for Gain — Incidents — Closjs Proximity to Wall Street 
—Gift Enterprises — Their Evil Tendency— Be Honest or Die— The 
Prodigftl— The Game Ended. 151 



00NTBNT8. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE WOMAN OP PLBASUBB. 

Solid Satisfaction— An Error Corrected— Albert Barnes — Plant 
one Grain of Corn— Mere Social Position — Do not Covet it — A 
Worldly Marriage — Mere Personal Attractions — Abigail — Make 
Yourself Attractive — Not Ashamed of Age — Culture your Heart — 
At the Hospital— "Seven Days"— "Hold My Hand*'— Flatteries of 
Men — An Angel — Discipleship of Fashion — Fashion Plates — Bibli- 
cal Fashion— A Beautiful Attire— A Bright World. 160 

CHAPTER XXL 

THK SINS OP SUMMER WATERING PLACES. 

An Ancient Watering Place — Trad ition Concerning it — Modem 
Watering Places — A Picture — The First Temptation— Sacred Parade 
— Crack Sermons — Quartette — Air Bewitched — Horse Racing — De- 
ceptive Titles — Saratoga — Bets Run High — Greenhorns Think all is 
Fair— Sacrifice of Physical Strength — Fashionable Idiots — "Do 
Thyself no Harm" — Hasty Alliances — Domestic Infelicities — Twenty 
Blanks to One Prize — Load of Life — The Fop— Baneful Literature 
—Its Popularity at Watering Places — The Intoxicating Beverage.. 170 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE TIDES OP MUNICIPAL SEN. 

Intense Excitement— The Stranger's Reception— A Wild Laugh 
— Temptations to Commercial Fraud — '^This Rivalry is Awful" — 
Decide for Yourself— One with God is a Majority — Political Life 
— Allurements to an Impure Life — Cormorants of Darkness — Six 
Rainbowfr—A Thousand of Them— "Tick, Tick !"— An Enraptured 
Vision. 183 

CHAPTER XIV. 

RESPONSIBILITY OP CITY RULBBS. 

'Ancient Tyre — A Majestic City — Its Magnificence— Its Present Po- 
sition — Character of a City — Cities Hold the World's Sceptre — If an 
Unprincipled Mayoralty or Common Council, there will be Unlim- 
ited License for all kinds of Trickery and Sin — Questions that In- 
terest the Merchant — Educational Interests — Some Cities these In- 
terests are Settled in the Low Caucus — Character of Officials Affects 
the Domestic Circle — Even Religious Interests Affected — John Mor- 
risseyl — Pray for your Mayor — And all in Authority — Perils and 
Temptations of the Police — An Affecting Incident 198 



CONTENTS. 



zi 



CHATTER XV. 

tAFEQUABDS FOR YOUNG MHlf. 

David and Absalom — A Bad Boy— A Broken-hearted Father — ** Is 
the Young Man Safe ?" — Same Question must be Asked To-day — Not 
as Other Men are — Wm. M. Tweed-^His Strong Nature — Success — 
Failure — Who would Live such a Life ? — Love of Home — Can never 
Forget it — A Second Home — Nothing Coarse or Gross at Home — 
Industrious Habits— The First Horticulturist— Work or Die— A 
Bigh Ideal of Life — Aim High — Respect for the Sabbath — An Inci- 
dent—The Greatest Safeguard— The Great Want— "I am the Young 
Man"— The Turning Point 207 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE VOICES OP THE STREET. ' 

Voices of Nature — This Life is a Scene of Toil and Struggle— In- 
dustry — All Classes and Conditions of Society Must Commingle— 
Democratic Principle of the Gospel — Hard to Keep the Heart Right 
—The Man of War— The Victorious Veteran of Thirty Years* Con 
flict — Life is Full of Pretension and Sham — How few People are 
Natural— A Great Field for Charity— Poor Wanderers— Strong Faith 
of Childhood — All the People Looking Forward— No Census- 
Twelve Gates. 221 

CHAPTER XVII. 

HEROES IN COMMON LI7B. 

Great Military Chieftains — Unrolling a Scroll of Heroes — Heroes 
of the Sick Room — Heroes of Toil — Sword vs. Needle— Great Battle 
Fields — Domestic Injustice — No Bitter Words — Peabody — Grinnell 
-Missionaries at the West — Sacrificing Parents — Melrose Abbey — 
fhe Atkins Family— "Fire I" — Who are those Paupers ?— Corona- 
*fon Day— Dc not Envy Anyone— The Great Captain's Cheer.. . .Ji30 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAW. 

A Dead City— Midnight Witchery— Melrose Abbey — Alhambra— 
Jerusalem in Ruins— The Midnight Ride — Midnight I^rploration— 
Jerusalem Rebuilt — Plato — Demosthenes — Church Affection — The 
Church — Sacrifices for It— Secret of Backsliding— Building without 
Secure Foundation — Old-fashioned Way — Does it Hurt? — New-fash- 
ioned Way — ^Wants a Ride — Reason People are Angered — " Yon're 



zii 



CONTENTS. 



a Pauper "—Triumphant Sadness — Palace of Shushan— Ito Immen- 
sity— Home-sicknesa— The Blacksmith — A Bereaved Mother — A 
r*arlor in Philadelphia— Never Give Up— Our Befuge 24J 



T. DB WITT TALMAGE, D. D. 



Thomas DeWitt Talmage was bora in 1832, in Bonnd 
Brook, Sonierset County, K. J. His father wag a farmer 
of much vigor and consistency of character; his mother 
a woman of noted energy, hopefulness and equanimity. 
Both parents -were in marked respects characteristic 
Differences of disposition and methods blended in them 
into a harmonious, consecrated, benignant and cheery 
life. The father won all the confidence and the best of 
the honors a hard-sensed truly American community had 
to yield. The mother was that counseling and quietly 
provident force which made her a helpmeet indeed and 
her home the center and sanctuary of the sweetest influ- 
ences that have fallen on the path of a large number of 
children, of whom four sons are all ministers of the 
V7ord. From a period ante-dating the Revolution, the 
ancestors of our subject were members of the Reformed 
Dutch Church, in which Dr Talmage's father was the 
leading lay office bearer through a life extended beyond 
fourscore years. The youngest of the children, it seemed 
doubtful at first whether DeWitt would follow his broth- 
ers into the ministry. His earliest preference was the 
Uw, the studies of which he pursued for a year after his 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



gradnation with honors from the University of the City 
of New York. The faculties which would have made 
him the greatest jury advocate of the age were, however, 
preserved for and directed toward the pulpit by an un- 
rest which took the very sound of a cry within him for 
months, "Woe is me if I preach not the gospeL" When 
he submitted to it the always ardent but never urged 
hopes of his honored parents were realized. He entered 
the ministry from the New Brunswick Semiikry of The- 
ology. As his destiny and powers came to manifestation 
in Brooklyn, his pastoral life prior to that was but a 
preparation for it. It can, therefore, be indicated as an 
incidental stage in his career rather than treated at length 
as a principal part of it. His first settlement was at 
Belleville, on the beautiful Passaic, in New Jersey. For 
three years there he underwent an excellent practical 
education in the conventional ministry. .His congrega- 
tion was about the most cultivated and exacting in the 
rural regions of the sterling little state. Historically, it 
was known to be about the oldest society of Protestant- 
ism in New Jersey. Its records, as preserved, run back 
over 200 years, but it is known to have had a strong life 
the better part of a century more. Its structure is re- 
garded as one of the finest of any country congregation 
in the United States. No wonder: it stands within rifle- 
shot of the quarry from which Old Trinity in New 
York was hewn. The value (and the limits) of stereo- 
typed preaching and what he did not know came as an 
instructiye and disillusionizing force to the theological 



BIOGBAPHIOAL* 

tjrro at Belleville. There also came and remained strong 
friendships, inspiring reviyals, and sacred counsela. 

Bj natural promotion three years at Syracuse suc- 
ceeded three at Belleville. That cultivated, critical city 
furnished Mr. Talmage the value of an audience in which 
professional men were predominant in influence. His 
preaching there grew tonic and free. As Mr. Pitt ad- 
vised a young friend, he "risked himself.'' The church 
grew from few to many — from a state of coma to ath- 
letic life. The preacher learned to go to school to hu~ 
manity and his own heart. The lessons they taught him 
agreed with what was boldest and most compelling in 
the spirit of the revealed Word. ^ Those whose claims 
were sacred to him found the saline climate of Syracuse 
a cause of unhealth. Otherwise it is likely that that 
most delightful region in the United States — Central 
New York — for men of letters who equally love nature 
and culture, would have been the home of Mr. Talmage 
for life. 

The next seven years of Mr. Talmage's life were spent 
in Philadelphia. There his powers got "set." He learned 
what it was he could best do. He had the courage of 
his consciousness and he did it. Previously he might 
have felt it incumbent on him to give to pulpit traditions 
the homage of compliance— though at Syracuse "the 
mpre excellent way," any man's own way, so that he 
have the divining gift of genius and the nature a-tune 
to all high sympathies and purposes — had in glimpses 
eome to him. He realized that it was his duty and mis- 



BIOOBAPHIOAL. 

Aon in the world to make it hear the gospel. The church 
was not to him in numbers a select few, in organization 
a monopoly. It was meant to be the conqueror and 
transformer of the world. For seven years he wrought 
with much success on this theory, all the time realizing 
that his plans could come to fullness only under condi- 
tions that enabled him to build from the bottom up an 
organization which could get nearer to the masses and 
which would have no precedents to be afraid of as ghosts 
in its path. Hence he ceased from being the leading 
preacher in Philadelphia to become in Brooklyn the lead- 
ing preacher in the world. 

His work for nine years here, know all our readers. 
It began in a cramped brick rectangle, capable of hold- 
ing 1,200, and he came to it on "the call" of nineteen. 
In less than two years that was exchanged for an iron 
structure, with raised seats, the interior curved like a 
horse- shoe, the pulpit a platform bridging the ends. 
That held 3,000 persons. It lasted just long enough to 
revolutionize church architecture in cities into harmony 
with common sense. Smaller duplicates of it started in 
every quarter, three in Brooklyn, two in New York, one in 
Montreal, one in Louisville, any number in Chicago, two 
in San Francisco, like numbers abroad. Then it burnt up, 
that from its ashes the present stately and most sensible 
structure might rise. Gothic, of brick and stone, cathe- 
dral-like above, amphitheatre-like below, it holds 6,000 
as easily as one person, and all can hear and see equdily 
well. In a large sense the people built these edifices. 



BIOGBAPHIOAL. 



Their architects were Leonard Yaux and John Welch 
respectively. It is sufficiently indicative to say in gen- 
eral of Dr. Talmage's work in the Tabernacle, that his 
audiences are always as many as the place will hold; 
that twenty-three papers in Christendom statedly publish 
his entire sermons and Friday-night discourses, esaclu- 
sive of the dailies of the TJnited States; that the papers 
girdle the globe, being published in London, Liverpool, 
Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Toronto, Montreal, St 
John's, ^idney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Chicago, 
Boston, Kaleigh, Ne*w York, and rnany others. To pul- 
pit labors of this responsibility should be added consid- 
erable pastoral work, the conduct of the Lay College, 
and constantly recurring lecturing and literary work, to 
fill out the public life of a very busy man. 

The multiplicity, large results and striking progress 
of the labors of Dr. Talmage have made the foregoing 
more of a brief narrative of the epochs of his career 
than an account of the career itself. It has had to be 
so. Lack of space requires it His work has had raCher 
to be intimated in generalities than told in details. The 
filling in must come either from the knowledge of the' 
reader or from intelligent inferences and conclusions, 
drawn from the few principal facts stated, and stated 
with care. This remains to be said: No other preacher 
addresses so many constantly. The words of no other 
preacher were ever before carried by so many types or 
carried so far. Types give him three continents for a 
ehurch, and the English-speaking world for a congregft- 



BIOQBAFHIOAL. 



tion. The judgment of his generation will of course be 
divided upon him just as that of the next will not. 
That he is a topic in every newspaper is much more sig- 
nificant than the fact of what treatment it gjves him. 
Only men of genius are universally commented on. The 
universality of the comment makes friends and foes 
alike prove the fact of the genius. That is what is im- 
pressive. As for the quality of the comment, it will, in 
nine cases out of ten, be much more a revelation of the 
character behind the pen which writes it than a,true view 
or review of the man. This is necessarily so. The press 
and the pulpit in the main are defective judges o^ one 
another. The former rarely enters the inside of the lat- 
ter's work. There is acquaintanceship, but not intimacy 
between them. Journals find out the /act of a preacher's 
power in time. Then they go looking for the causes 
Long before, however, the masses have felt the causes 
and have realized, not merely discovered, the fact The 
penalty of being the leaders of great masses has, from 
Whitefield and Wesley to Spurgeon and Talmage, been 
to serve as the target for small wits. A constant source 
•of attack on men of such magnitude always has been 
and will be the presses, which, by the common consent 
of mankind, are described and dispensed from all cons id- 
eration, when they are rated Satanic. Their attacks 
confirm a man's right to respect and reputation, and are 
a proof of his influence and greatness. It can be trulj 
said that while secular criticism in the United States 
&vorably regards our subject in proportion to its Intel 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



ligence and uprightness, the judgment of foreigners on 
him has long been an index to the judgment of poster- 
ity here. No other American is read so much and so 
constantly abroad. His extraordinary imagination, ear- 
nestness, descriptive powers and humor, his great art in 
grouping and arrangement, his wonderful mastery of 
words to illumine and alleviate human conditions and to 
interpret and inspire the harmonies of the better nature? 
are appreciated by all who can put themselves in sym- 
pathy with his originality of methods and his high con- 
secration of purpose. His manner mates with his nature. 
It is each sermon in action. He presses the eyes, hands, 
his entire body, into the service of the illustrative truth. 
Gestures are the accompaniment of what he says. As 
he stands out before the immense throng, without a 
scrap of notes or manuscript before him, the effect pro- 
duced can not be understood by those who have never 
seen it. The solemnity, the tears, the awful hush, as 
though the audience could not breathe again, are oft- 
times painful. 

His voice is peculiar, not musical, but productive of 
startling, strong effects, such as characterize no preacher 
on either side of the Atlantic. His power to grapple 
an audience and master it from text to peroration has no 
equal. No man was ever less self-conscious in his work. 
He feels a mission of evangelization on him as by the 
imposition of the Supreme, That mission he responds 
to by doing the duty that is nearest to him with all his 
might — as confident that he is under the care and order 



BIOOKAFHIOAL. 



of ft Divine Master as those who hear him are that they 
are under the spell of the greatest prose-poet that ever 
made the gospel his song and the redemption of the race 
the passion of his heart. 

The following discourses were taken down by steno- 
graphic reporters and revised by Mr. Talmage specially 
for this work. On the occasion of their delivery the 
church was thronged beyond description, the streets 
around blockaded with people so that carriages could 
not pass, Mr. Talmage himself gaining admi^Mion only 
by the help of the police. 



CHAPTEE I. 



A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 

" When said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall ; and 
when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto 
me, Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I 
went in and saw ; and behold every form of creeping things and 
abominable beasts." — Ezekiel, viii: 8, 9, 10. 

So this minister of religion, Ezekiel, was commanded 
to the exploration of the sin of his day. He was not to 
stand outside the door guessing what it was, but was to 
go in and see for himself. He did not in vision say: 
" O Lord, I don't wan't to go in ; I dare not go in ; if I 
go in I might be criticised ; O Lord, please let me off 
When God told Ezekiel to go in he went in, " and saw, 
and behold all manner of creeping things and abomin- 
able beasts." I, as a minister of religion, felt I had a 
Divine commission to explore the iniquities of our 
cities. I did not ask counsel of my session, or my Pres- 
bytery, or of the newspapers, but asking the companion- 
ship of three prominent police officials and two of the 
elders of my church, I unrolled my commission, and 
it said : " Son of man, dig into the wall ; and when I 
had digged into the wall, behold a door ; and he said, 
Go in and see the wicked abominations that are done 
here ; and I went in, and saw, and behold !" Brought 
up in the country and surrounded by much parental 
care, I had not until this autumn seen the haunts of 
iniquity. By the grace of God defended, I had never 
29 



80 ▲ PEBSONAL BXPLOBATION IH HAUNTS OF YICOL 

sowed any " wild oats." I had somehow been able, to 
tell from various sources something about the iniquities 
of the great cities, and to preach against them ; but I 
saw, in the destruction of a great multitude of the peo- 
ple, that there must be an infatuation and a temptation 
that had never been spoken about, and I said, " I will 
explore." I saw tens of thousands of men going down, 
and if there had been a spiritual percussion answering to 
the physical percussion, the whole air would have been 
full of the rumble, and roar, and crack, and thunder of 
the demolition^ and this moment, if we should pause in 
our service, we should hear the crash, crash ! Just as in 
the sickly season you sometimes hear the bell at the gate 
of the cemetery ringing almost incessantly, so I found 
that the bell at the gate of the cemetery where lost souls 
are buried was tolling by day and tolling by night. I 
said, " I will explore." I went as a physician goes into 
a small-pox hospital, or a fever lazzaretto, to see what 
practical and useful information I might get. That 
would be a foolish doctor who would stand outside the 
door of an invalid writing a Latin prescription. When 
the lecturer in a medical college is done with his lecture 
he takes the students into the dissecting room, and he 
shows them the reality. I am here this morning to report 
a plague, and to tell you how sin dissects the body, and 
dissects the mind, and dissects the soul. " Oh !" say 
you, " are you not afraid that in consequence of your 
exploration of the inquities of the city other persons 
may make exploration, and do themselves damage ?" I 
reply: "If, in company with the Commissioner of 
Police, apd the Captain of Police, and the Inspector of 
Police, and the company of two Christian gentlemen, 
and not with the spirit of curiosity, but that you may 
see sin in order the better to combat it, then, in the name 



A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 31 



of the eternal God, go ? But, if not, then stay away. 
Wellington, standing in the battl§^ of Waterloo when 
the bullets were buzzing around his head, saw a civilian 
on the field. He ' said to him, " Sir, what are you 
doing here? Be off?" "Why," replied the civilian, 
" there is no more danger here for me than there is for 
you." Then Wellington fiushed up and said, " God and 
my country demand that I be here, but you have no 
errand here." Now'I, as an officer in the army of Jesus 
Christ, went on this exploration, and on to' this battle- 
field. If you bear a like commission, go ; if not, 
stay away. But you say, " Don't you think that some- 
how your description of these places will induce people 
to go and see for themselves ?" I answer, yes, just as 
much as the description of the yellow fever at Grenada 
would induce people to go down there and get the pesti- 
lence. It was told us there were hardly enough people 
alive to bury the dead, and I am going to tell you a 
story in these Sabbath morning sermons of places where 
they are all dead or dying. And I shall not gild iniqui- 
ties. I shall play a dirge and not an anthem, and while 
I shall not put faintest blush on fairest cheek, I will 
kindle the cheeks of many a man into a conflagration, 
and I will make his ears tingle. But you say, " Don't 
you know that the papers are criticising you for the 
position you take?" I say, yes ; and do you know how 
I feel about it ! There is no man who is more indebted 
to the newspaper press than I am. My business is to 
preach the truth, and the wider the audience the news- 
paper press gives me, the wider my field is. As the 
secular and religious press of the United States and the 
Canadas, and of England and Ireland and Scotland and 
Australia and 'New Zealand, are giving me every week 
nearly three million souls for an audience, I say I am 



32 ▲ PSBSONAL BZPLO&ATION IK HAUNTS OT TIOIK. 



indebted to the press, anyhow. Go on ! To the day of 
my death I cannot pay them what I owe them. So slash 
away, gentlemen. The more the merrier. If there is 
anything I despise, it is a dull time. Brisk criticism is 
a coarse Turkish towel, with which every public man 
needs every day to be rubbed down, in order to keep 
healthful circulation. Give my love to all the secular 
and religious editors, and full permission to run their 
steel pens clear through my sermons, from introduction 
to application. 

It was ten o'clock of a calm, clear, star-lighted night 
when the carriage rolled with us from the bright part of 
the city down into the region where gambling and crime 
and death hold high carnival. When I speak of houses 
of dissipation, I do not refer to one sin, or five sins, but 
to all sins. As the horses halted, and, escorted by the 
officers of the law, we went in, we moved into a world 
of which we were as practically ignorant as though it 
had swung as far off from us as Mercury is from Saturn. 
No shout of revelry, no guffaw of laughter, but compar- 
ative silence. Not many signs of death, but the dead 
were there. As I moved through this place I said, 
"This is the home of lost souls." It was a Dante's 
Inferno; nothing to stir the mirth, but many things to 
fill the eyes with tears of pity. Ah ! there were moral 
corpses. There were corpses on the stairway, 
corpses in the gallery, corpses in the gardens. Leper 
met loper, but no bandagcl mouth kept back the 
breatho I felt that I was sitting on the iron coast against 
which Euroclydon had driven a hundred dismasted 
hulks — every moment more blackened hulks rolling in. 
And while I stood and waited for the going down of the 
storm and the lull of the sea, I bethought myself, this 
is an everlasting storm, and these billows always rage, 



a PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 33 

and on each carcass that strewed the beach already had 
alighted a vulture — the long-beaked, filthy vulture of 
unending dispair — ^now picking into the corruption, and 
now on the black wing wiping the blood of a soul ! 'Nq 
lark, no robin, no chaffinch, but vultures, vultures, vul- 
tures. I was reading of an incident that occurred in 
Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, where a naturalist had 
presented to him a deadly serpent, and he put it in a 
bottle and stood it in his studio, and one evening, 
while in the studio with his daughter, a bat flew in the 
window, extinguished the light, struck the bottle con- 
taining the deadly serpent, and in a few moments there 
was a shriek from the daughter, and in a few hours she 
was dead. She had been bitten of the serpent. Amid 
these haunts of death, in that midnight exploration I 
saw that there were lions and eagles and doves for in- 
signia; but I thought to myself how inappropriate. 
Better the insignia of an adder and a bat. 

First of all, I have to report as a result of this mid- 
night exploration that all the sacred rhetoric about the 
costly magnificence of the haunts of iniquity is apocry- 
phal. We were shown what was called the costliest and 
most magnificent specimen. I had often heard that the 
walls were adorned with masterpieces; that the fountains 
were bewitching in the gaslight; that the music was like 
the touch of a Thalberg or a Gottschalk ; that the uphol- 
stery was imperial; that the furniture in some places 
was like the throne-room of the Tuilleries. It is all false. 
Masterpieces! There was not a painting worth $5, leav- 
ing aside the frame. Great daubs of color that no 
intelligent mechanic would put on his wall. A cross- 
breed between a chromo and a splash^ of poor paint! 
Music! Some of the homeliest creatures I ever saw 
squawked discord, accompanied by pianos out of tune! 
3 



34 A PERSONAL BXPLOEATION IN HAUNTS OP VIOB. 

Upholstery I Two characteristics; red and cheap. You 
have heard so much about the wonderful lights — blue 
and green and yellow and orange flashing across the 
dancers and the gay groups. Seventy-five cents' worth 
of chemicals would produce all that in one night. Tinsel 
gewgaws, tawdriness frippery, seemingly much of it 
bought at a second-hand furniture store and never paid 
for! For the most part, the inhabitants were repulsive. 
Here and there a soul on whom God had put the crown 
of beauty, but nothing comparable with the Christian 
loveliness and purity which you may see any pleasant 
afternoon on any of the thoroughfares of our great cities. 
Young man, you are a stark fool if you go to places of 
dissipation to see pictures, and hear music, and admire 
beautiful and gracious countenances. From Thomas's, or 
Dodworth's, or Gilmore's Band, in ten minutes you will 
hear more harmony than in a whole year of the racket 
and bang of the cheap orchestras of the dissolute. Come 
to me, and I will give you a letter of introduction to 
any one of five hundred homes in Brooklyn and 'New 
York, where you will see finer pictures and hear more 
beautiful music— music and pictures compared with which 
there is nothing worth speaking of in houses of dissi- 
pation. Sin, however pretentious, is almost always poor. 
Mirrors, divans, Chickering grand she cannot keep. The 
sheriff is after it with uplifted mallet, ready for the ven- 
due. " Going ! going ! gone ! 

But, my friends, I noticed in all the haunts of dissi- 
pation that there was an attempt at music, however poor. 
The door swung open and shut to music; they stepped to 
music; they danced to music; they attempted nothing 
without music, ^ind I said to myself, " If such inferior 
music has such power, and drum, and fife, and orchestra 
are enlisted in the service of the devil, what multipotent 



A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 35 



power there must be in music ! and is it not high time 
that in all our churches and reform associations we 
tested how much charm there is in it to bring men 
off the wrong road to the right road?" Fifty times that 
night I said within myself, " If poor music is so power- 
ful in a bad direction, why cannot good music be almost 
omnipotent in a good direction ?" Oh ! my friends, we 
want to drive men into the kingdom of God with a mus- 
ical staff. We want to Shut off the path of death with 
a musical bar. We want to snatch all the musical instru- 
ments from the service of the devil, and with organ, and 
cornet, and base viol, and piano and orchestra praise the 
Lord. Good Richard Cecil when seated in the pulpit, 
said that when Doctor Wargan was at the organ, he, Mr. 
Cecil, was so overpowered with the music that he found 
^himself looking for the first chapter of Isaiah in the 
prayer book, wondering he could not find it. Oh! holy 
bewilderment. Let us send such men as Phillip Phillips, 
the Christian vocalist, all around the world, and 
Arbuckle, the cornest, with his " Robin Adair " set to 
Christian melody, and George Morgan with his Hallelu- 
ah Chorus, and ten thousand Christian men with up- 
lifted hosannas to capture this whole earth for God. Oh ! 
my friends, we have had enough minor strains in the 
church; give us major strains. We have had enough 
dead marches in the church; play us those tunes which 
are played when an army is on a dead run to overtake an 
enemy. Give us the double-quick. We are in full 
gallop of cavalry chai;ge. Forward, the whole line! 
Many a man who is unmoved by Christian argument 
surrenders to a Christian song. 

Many a man under the power of Christian music has 
had a change take place in his soul and in his life equal 
to that which took place in the life of a man in Scot- 



86 A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VIOB. 

land, who for fifteen years had been a drunkard. Com- 
ing home late at night, as he touched the doorsill, his 
wife trembled at his coming. Telling the story after- 
ward, she said, "I didn't dare go to bed lest he violently 
drag me forth. When he came home there was only 
about the half inch of the candle left in the socket. 
When he entered, he said: 'Where are the children?' 
and I said, 'They are up stairs in bed.' He said, 'Go 
and fetch them,' and I went up and I knelt down and I 
prayed God to defend me and my children from their 
cruel father. And then I brought them down. He 
took up the eldest in his arms and kissed her and said, 
'My dear lass, the Lord hath sent thee a father home to- 
night.' And so he did with the second, and then he 
took up the third of the children and said, 'My dear boy, 
the Lord hath 'sent thee home a father to-night.' And' 
then he took up the babe and said, 'My darling babe, the 
Lord hath sent thee home a father to-night.' And then 
he put his arm around me and kissed me, and said, 'My 
dear lass, the Lord hath sent thee home a husband 
to-night.' Why, sir, I had na' heard anything like that 
for fourteen years. And he prayed and he was com- 
forted, and my soul was restored, for I .didn't live as I 
ought to have lived, close to God. My trouble had 
broken me down." Oh! for such a transformation in 
some of the homes of Brooklyn to-day. By holy con- 
spiracy, in the last song of the morning, let us sweep 
every prodigal into the kingdom of our God. Oh! ye 
chanters above Bethlehem, come *and hover this morning 
and give us a snatch of the old tune about "good will to 
men." 

But I have, also to report of that midnight ex- 
ploration, that I saw something that amazed me more 
than I can tell. I do not want to tell it, for it will 



A PERSONAL EXFLOBATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 37 

take pain to many hearts far away, and 1 cannot comfort 
them. But I must tell it. In all these haunts of 
iniquity I found young men with the ruddy color of 
country liealth on their cheek, evidently just come to 
town for business, entering stores, and shops, and offices. 
They had helped gather the summer grain. There they 
were in haunts of iniquity, the look on their cheek which 
is never on the cheek except when there has been hard 
work on the farm and in the open air. Here were these 
young men who had heard how gayly a boat dances on 
the edge of a maelstrom, and they were venturing. O 
God! will a few weeks do such an awful work for a 
young man? O Lord! hast thou forgotten what trans- 
pired when they knelt at the family altar that morning 
when he came away, and how father's voice trembled in 
the prayer, and mother and sister sobbed as they lay on 
the floor? I saw that young man when he first con- 
fronted evil. I saw.it was the first night there. I saw 
on him a defiant look, as much as to say, "I am mightier 
than sin." Then 1 saw him consult with iniquity. 
Then I saw him waver and doubt. Then I saw going- 
over his countenance the shadow of sad reflections, and 
I knew from his looks there was a powerful memory 
stirring his soul. 1 think there was a whisper going 
out from the gaudy upholstery, saying, "My son, go 
home." I think there was a hand stretched out from 
under the curtains — a hand tremulous with anxiety, a 
hand that had been worn with work, a, hand partly 
wrinkled with age, that seemed to beckon him^ away, 
and so goodness and sin seemed to struggle in that 
young man's soul; but sin triumphed, and he surren- 
dered to darkness and to death — an ox to the slaughter. 
Oh! my soul, is this the end of all the good advice? Is 
this the end of all the prayers that have been made! 



> 

38 ▲ PERSONAL BXPLOBATION IN HAUNTS OF VIOB. 

Have the clusters of the country vineyard been thrown 
into this great wine-press where Despair and Anguish 
and Death trample, and the vintage is a vintage of blood ? 
I do not feel so sorry for that young man who, brought 
up in city life, knows beforehand what are all the sur- 
rounding temptations; but God pity the country lad 
unsuspecting and easily betrayed. Oh! young man 
from the farmhouse among the hills, what have your 
parents done that you should do this against them? 
"Why are you bent on killing with trouble her who gave 
you birth? Look at her fingers — what makes them so 
distort? Working for you. Do you prefer to that hon- 
est old face the berouged cheek of sin? Write home 
to-morrow morning by the first mail, cursing your 
mother's white* hair, cursing her stooped shoulder, curs- 
ing her old arm-chair, cursing the cradle in which she 
rocked you. *'0h!" you say, "I can't, I can't." You 
are doing it already. There is something on your hands, 
on your forehead, on your feet. It is red. What is it? 
The blood of a mother's broken heart! When you were 
threshing the harvest apples from that tree at the corner 
of the field lasc summer, did yon think you would 
ever come to this? Did you think that the sharp 
sickle of death would cut you down so soon? If I 
thought I could break the infatuation I would come 
down from the pulpit and throw my arms around you 
and beg you to stop. Perhaps I am a little more sym- 
pathetic with such because I was a country lad. It was 
not until fifteen years of age that I saw a great city. I 
remember how stupendous New York looked as I arrived 
at Cortlandt Ferry. And now that I look back and 
remember that I had a nature all awake to hilarities and 
amusements, it is a wonder that I escaped. I was say- 
ing this to a gentleman in JN'ew York a few days ago, 



A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 39 

and he said, "Ah! sir, I guess there were some prayers 
hovering about." When I see a young man coming 
from the tame life of the country and going down in the 
city ruin, I am not surprised. My only surprise is that 
any escape, considering the allurements. I was a few 
days ago on the St. Lawrence river, and I said to the 
captain, "What a swift stream this is." "Oh!" he 
replied, " seventy-five miles from here it is ten times 
swifter. Why, we have to employ an Iriian pilot, and. 
we give him $1,000 for his summer's work, just to con- 
duct our boats through between the rocks and the islands, 
so swift are the rapids." Well, my friends, every man that 
comes into J^ew York and Brooklyn life comes into the 
rapids, and the only question is whether he shall have 
safe or unsafe pilotage. Young man, your bad habits 
will be reported at the homestead. You cannot hide 
them. There are people who love to carry bad news, 
and there will be some accursed old gossip who will wend 
her infernal step toward the old homestead, and she will 
sit down, and, after she has a while wriggled in the 
chair, she will say to your old parents, "Do you know 
your son drinks?" Then your parents will get white 
about the lips, and your mother will ask to have the 
door set a little open for the fresh air, and before that 
old gossip leaves the place she will have told your parents 
all about the places where you are accustomed to go. 
Then your mother will come out, and she will sit down 
on the step where you used to play, and she will cry and 
cry. Then she will be sick, and the gig of the country 
doctor will come up the country lane, and the horse will 
be tied at the swing-gate, and the prescription will fail, 
and she will get worse and worse, and in her delirium 
she will talk about nothing but you. Then the farmers 
will come to the funeral, and tie the horses at the rail 



4:0 A f SRSONAL BXPLOBATION IN HAUNTS OF VIOB. 

fence about the house, and they will talk about what 
ailed the one that died, and one will say it was inter- 
mittent, and another will say it was congestion, and 
another will say it was premature old age; but it will be 
neither intermittent, nor congestion, nor old age. In thej 
ponderous book of Almighty God it will be recorded foi* 
everlasting ages to read that you killed her. Our lan- 
guage is very fertile in describing different kinds of 
crime. Slaying a man is homicide. Slaying a brother 
is fratricide. Slaying a father is patricide. Slaying a 
mother is matricide. It takes two words to describe 
your crime — patricide and matricide. 

I must leave to other Sabbath mornings the unrolling 
of the scroll which I have this morning only laid on 
your table. We have come only to the vestibule of the 
subject. I have been treating of generals. I shall come 
to specifics. I have not told you of all the styles of peo- 
ple I saw in the haunts of iniquity. Before I get 
through with these sermons and next Sabbath morning 
I will answer the question everywhere asked me, why 
, does municipal authority allow these haunts of iniquity? 

I will show all the obstacles in the way. Sirs, before 
I get through with this course of Sabbath jnorning ser- 
mons, by the help of the eternal God, I will save ten 
thousand men! And m the execution of this mission I 
defy all earth and hell. 

But I was going to tell you of an incident. I said to 
the officer, " Well, let us go; I am tired of this scene;" 
and as we passed out of the haunts of iniquity into the 
fresh air, a soul passed in. What a face that was ! Sor- 
row only half covered up with an assumed joy. It was 
a woman's face. I saw as plainly as on the page of a 
book the tragedy. You know that there is such a thing 
as somnambulism, or walking in one's sleep. Well, in 



A PERSONAL EXPLORATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE, 41 

a fatal somnambulism, a soul started off from her father's 
house. It was very dark, and her feet were cut of the 
rocks; but on she went until she came to the verge of a 
chasm, and she began to descend from bowlder to 
bowlder down over the rattling shelving — for you know 
while walking in sleep people will go where they would 
not go when awake. Further on down, and 'further, 
where no owl of the night or hawk of the day would 
venture. On down until she touched the depth of the 
chasm. Then, in walking sleep, she began to ascend 
the other side of the chasm, rock above rock, as the roe 
boundeth. Without having her head to swim with the 
awful steep, she scaled the height. No eye but the 
sleepless eye of God watched her as she went down one 
side the chasm and came up the other side the chasm. 
It was an August night, and a storm was gathering, and 
a loud burst of thunder awoke her from her somnambu- 
lism, and she said, " Whither shall I fly?" and with an 
affrighted eye she looked back upon the chasm she had 
crossed, and she looked in front, and there was a deeper 
chasm before her. She said, ''What shall I do? Must 
I die here?" And as she bent over the one chasm, she 
heard the sighing of the past; and as she bent over the 
other chasm, she heard the portents of the future. Then 
she sat down on the granite crag, and cried: "O! for my 
father's house! O! for the cottage, where I might die 
amid embowering honeysuckle! O!. the past! O! the 
future! O! fatlier! O! mother! O! God!" But the 
storm that had been gathering culminatedj and wrote 
with finger of lightning on the sky just above the hori- 
zon, " The way of the transgressor is hard." And then 
thunder-peal after thunder-peal uttered it: ''AYhich for- 
saketh the guide of her youth and forgetteth the cove- 
nant of her God. Destroyed without remedy!" And 



42 A PERSONAL BXPLOBATION IN HAUNTS OF VICE. 

the cavern behind echoed it, "Destroyed without rem- 
edy!" And the chasm before echoed it, "Destroyed 
without remedy!" There she perished, her cut and 
bleeding feet on the edge of one chasm, her long locks 
washed of the storm dripping over the other chasm. 

But by this time our carriage had reached the curb- 
stone of my dwelling, and I awoke, and behold it was a 
dream! 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 



43 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 
"Policeman, what of the night ?" — Isaiah xxi: 11, 

The original of the text may be translated either 
" watchman " or policeman." I have chosen the latter 
word. The olden- time cities were all thus guarded. 
There were roughs, and thugs, and desperadoes in Jeru- 
salem, as well as there are in New York and Brooklyn. 
The police headquarters of olden time was on top of the 
45ity wall, ^ing Solomon, walking incognito through 
the streets, reports in one of his songs that he met these 
officials. King Solomon must have had a large posse of 
police to look after his rc^al grounds, for he had twelve 
thousand blooded horses in his stables, and he had mil- 
lions of dollars in his palace, and he had six hundred 
wives, and, though the palace was large, no house was 
ever large enough to hold two women married to the 
same man; much less could six hundred keep the peace. 
"Well, the night was divided into three watches, the first 
watch reaching from sundown to 10 o'clock; the second 
watch from 10 o'clock to two in the morning; the third 
watch from two in the morning to sunrise. An Idumean, 
anxious about the prosperity of the city, and in regard 
to any danger that might threaten it, accosts an officer 
just as you might any night upon our streets, saying, 
"Policeman, what of the night?" Policemen, more 
than any other people, understand a city. Upon them 



a V£le lepers of maa. lxfb. 

are vast responsibilities for small pay. The police officer 
of your city gets $1,100 salary, but he may spend only 
one night of an entire month in his family. The detect- 
ive of your city gets $1,500 salary, but from January to 
January there is not an hour that he may call his own. 
Amid cold and heat and tempest, and amid the perils of 
the bludgeon of the midnight assassin, he does his worko 
The moon looks down upon nine-tenths of the iniquity 
of our great cities. What wonder, then, that a few 
weeks ago, in the interest of morality and religion, I 
asked the question of the text, " Policeman, what of the 
night?" In addition to this powerful escortage, I asked 
two elders of the church to accompany me; not because 
they were any better than the other elders of the church, 
but because they were more muscular, and I was resolved 
that in any case where anything more than spiritual 
defense was necessary, to refer the whole matter to their 
hands! I believe in muscular Christianity. I wish that 
our theological seminaries, instead of sending out so 
many men with dyspepsia and^ liver complaint and all 
out of breath by the time they have climbed to the top 
of the pulpit stairs, would, through gymnasiums and 
other means, send into the pulpit physical giants as well 
as spiritual athletes. I do wish I could consecrate to the 
Lord two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois weight? 
But, borrowing the strength of others, I started out on 
the midnight exploration. I was preceded in this work 
by Thomas Chalmers, who opened every door of iniquity 
in Edinburgh before he established systematic ameliora- 
tion, and preceded by Thomas Guthrie, who explored all 
the squalor of the city before he established the ragged 
schools, and by every man who has done anything to 
balk crime, and help the tempted and the destroyed. 
Above all, I followed in the footsteps of Him who was * 



THE LEEERS OP HIGH LIFE. 



45 



derided by the hypocrites and the sanhedrims of his 
day, because he persisted in exploring the deepest moral 
slush of his time, going down among demoniacs and 
paupers and adulteresses, never so happy as when he 
had ten lepers to cure. Some of you may have been 
surprised that there was a great hue and cry raised be- 
fore these sermons were begun, and sometimes the hue 
and cry was made by professors of religion. I was not 
surprised. The simple fact is that in all our churches 
there are lepers who do not want their scabs touched, and 
they foresaw that before I got through with this series of 
sermons I would show up some of the wickedness and 
rottenness of what is called the upper class. The devil 
howled because he knew I was going to hit him hard ! 
Now, I say to all such men, whether in the church or 
out of it, ''Ye hypocrites, ye generation of vipers, how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell ?" 

I noticed in my midnight exploration with these high 
officials that the haunts of sin are chiefly supported by 
men of means and men of wealth. The young men 
recently come from the country, of whom I spoke last 
Sabbath morning, are on small salary, and they have 
but little money to spend in sin, and if they go into lux- 
uriant iniquity the employer finds it out by the inflamed 
eye and the marks of dissipation, and they are discharged. 
The luxuriant places of iniquity are supported by men, 
who come down from the fashionable avenues of New York, 
and cross over from some of the finest mansions of Brook- 
lyn. Prominent business men from Boston, Philadelphia, 
and Chicago, and Cincinnati, patronize these places of 
crime. I could call the names of prominent men in 
our cluster of cities who patronize these places of in- 
iquity, and I may call their names before I get through 
this course of sermons, though the fabric of New York 



46 



THE LEPBfiS OF Hl^H LIFE. 



and Brooklyn society tumble into wreck. Judges of 
courts, distinguished lawyers, officers of the church, 
political orators standing on Republican and Democratic 
and Greenback platforms talking about God and good 
morals until you might suppose them to be evangelists 
expecting a thousand converts in one night. Call the 
roll of dissipation in the haunts of iniquity any night, 
and if the inmates will answer, jon will find there stock- 
brokers from Wall street, large importers from Broad- 
way, iron merchants, leather merchants, cotton mer- 
chants, hardware merchants, wholesale grocers, repre- 
sentatives from all the commercial and wealthy classes. 
Talk about the heathenism below Canal street! There 
is a worse heathenism above Canal street. I prefer 
that kind of heathenism which wallows in filth and dis- 
gusts the beholder rather than that heathenism which 
covers up its walking putrefaction with camel's-hair 
shawl and point lace, and rides in turnouts worth $3,000, 
liveried driver ahead and resetted flunky behind. We 
have been talking so much about the gospel for the 
masses; now let us talk a little about the gospel for the 
lepers of society, for the millionaire sots, for the portable 
lazzarettos of upper-tendom. It is the iniquity that 
comes down from the higher circles of society that sup- 
ports the haunts of crime, and it is gradually turning 
our cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs waiting for the 
fire and brimstone tempest of the Lord God who 
whelmed the cities of the plain. We want about five 
hundred Anthony Comstocks to go forth and explore 
and expose the abominations of high life. For eight or 
ten years there stood within sight of the most fashionable 
New York drive a Moloch temple, a brown -stone hell on 
earth, which neither the Mayor, nor the judges, nor the 
police dared touch, when Anthony Comstock, a Christian 



THE LEPERS OP HIGH LIFE. 



47 



man of less than average physical stature, and with 
cheek scarred by the knife of a desperado whom he had 
arrested, walked into that palace of the damned on Fifth 
avenue, and in the name of God put an end to 
to it, the priestess presiding at the orgies retreating hy 
suicide into the lost world, her bleeding corpse found in 
her own bath-tub. May the eternal Grod have mercy on 
our cities. Gilded sin comes down from these high 
places into the upper circles of iniquity, and then on 
gradually down, until in five years it makes the whole 
pilgrimage, from the marble pillar on the brilliant 
avenue clear down to the cellars of Water street. The 
officer on that midnight exploration said to me: " Look 
at them now, and look at them three years from now 
when all this glory has departed; they'll be a heap of 
rags in the station-house." Another of the officers said 
tome: " That is the daughter of one of the wealthiest 
families on Madison square." 

But I have something more amazing to tell you than 
that the men of means and wealth support these haunts 
of iniquity, and that is, that they are chiefly supported 
by heads of families — fathers and husbands, with the 
awful perjury of broken marriage vows upon them, with 
a niggardly stipend left at home for the support of their 
families, going forth with their thousands for the dia- 
monds and wardrobe and equipage of iniquity. In the 
name of heaven, I denounce this public iniquity. Let 
such men be hurled out of decent circles. Let tliem be 
hurled out from business circles. If they will not 
repent, overboard with them! I lift one-half the bur- 
den of malediction from the unpitied head of offending 
woman, and hurl it on the blasted pate of offending man ! 
Society needs a new division of its anathema. By what 
law of justice does burning excoriation pursue offending 



48 



THE LEPEBS OF HIGH LIFIS. 



woman down off the precipices of destruction, while 
offending man, kid-gloved, walks in refined circles, 
invited up if he have money, advanced into political 
recognition, while all the doors of high life open at the 
first rap of his gold-headed cane? I sav, if you let one 
come back, let them both come back. If one must go 
down, let both go down. I give you as my opinion that 
the eternal perdition of all other sinners will be a heaven 
compared with the punishment everlasting of that man 
who, turning his back upon her whom he swore to pro- 
tect and defend until death, and upon his children, whose 
destiny may be decided by his example, goes forth to 
seek affectional alliances elsewhere. For such a man the 
portion will be fire, and hail, and tempest, and darkness, 
and blood,f and anguish, and despair forever, forever, for- 
ever! My friends, there has got to be a reform in this 
matter, or American society will go to pieces. Under 
the head of " incompatibility of temper," nine-tenths of 
the abomination goes on. What did you get married 
for if your dispositions are incompatible? "Oh!'- you 
say, "1 rushed into it without thought " Then you 
ought to be willing to suffer the punishment for making 
a fool of yourself: Incompatibility of temper! You 
are responsible for at least a half of the incompatibility 
Why are you not honest and willing to admit either that 
you did not control your temper, or that you had already 
broken your marriage oath ? In nine hundred and ninety- 
nine cases out of the thousand, incompatibility is a 
phrase to cover up wickedness already enacted. I declare 
in the presence of this city and in the presence of the 
world that heads of families are supporting these haunts 
of iniquity. I wish there might be a police raid lasting^ 
a great while, that they would just go down through all 
these places of sin and gather up all the prominent busl- 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 



49 



ness men of the city, and inarch them down through the 
street followed by about twenty reporters to take their 
names and put them in full capitals in the next day's 
paper! Let such a course be undertaken in our cities, 
and in six months there would be eighty per cent, off 
your public crime. It is not now the young men ard 
the boys that need so much looking after; it is theii- 
fathers and mothers. Let heads of families cease to pat- 
ronize places of iniquity, and in a short time thej would 
crumble to ruin. 

But you meet me with the question, "Why don't the 
city authorities put an end to such places of iniquity?" 
I answer in regard to Brooklyn, the work has already 
been done. Six years ago there were in the radius of 
your City Hall thirty-eight gambling saloons. They 
are all broken up. The ivory and wooden "chips" 
that came from the gambling-hells into the Police Head- 
quarters came in by the peck. How many inducements 
were offered to our officials, such as: "This will be worth 
a thousand dollars to you if you will let it go on." "This 
will be worth five thousand if you will only let it go on." 
But our commissioners of police, mightier than any 
bribe, pursued their work until, while beyond the city 
limits there may be exceptions, within the city limits of 
Brooklyn there is not a gambling-hell, or policy-shop, 
or a house of death so pronounced. There are under- 
ground iniquities and hidden scenes, but none so pro- 
nounced. Every Monday morning all the captains of 
the police make reports in regard to their respective pre- 
cincts. When the work began, the police in authority 
at that time said: "Oh! it can't be done; we can't get 
into these places of fniquitj^ to see them, and hence we 
can't break them up." "Then," said the commissioners 
of police, "break in the doors;" and it is astonishing how 



60 



THE LEPEBS OF HIGH LIFE. 



soon ^/ter the shoulders of a stout policeman goes against 
the door, it gets off its hinges. Some of the captains of 
police said: ''This thing has been going on so long, it 
cannot be crushed." ''Then," said the commissioners 
of police, "we'll get other captains of police." The 
work went on until now, if a reformer wants the com- 
missioners of police to show him the haunts of iniquity 
in Brooklyn, there are none to sliow him. If you know 
a single case that is an exception to what I say, report 
it to. me at tlie close of this service at the foot of this 
pla* -brm, and I will warrant that within two hours after 
you report the case Commissioner Jourdan, Superin- 
tendent Campbell, Inspector Waddy, and as many of the 
twenty-five detectives and of the five hundred and fifty 
policemen as are necessary will come down on it like an 
Alpine avalanche. If you do not report it, it is because 
you aro a coward, or else because you are in the sin your- 
self, and you do not want it shown up. You shall bear 
the whole responsibility, and it shall not be thrown on 
the hard-working and heroic detective and police force. 
But you say: "How has this general clearing out of 
gambling-hells and places of infquity been accom- 
plished?'-' Our authorities have been backed up by a 
high public sentiment. In a city which has on its judi- 
cial bench such magnificent men as Neilson, and 
Reynolds, and McCue, and Moore, and Pratt, and others 
whom I am not fortunate enough to know, there must 
be a mighty impulse upward toward God and good mor- 
als. We have in the high places of this city men not 
only with great heads, but with great hearts. A young 
man disappeared from his father's house about the time 
the Brooklyn Theater burned, and it was supposed that 
he had been destroyed in that ruin. The father, broken- 
hearted, sold his property in Brooklyn, and in desolation 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 



51 



left the city. Recently the wandering son came back. 
He could not find his father, who, in departing, had 
given no idea of his destination. The case was reported 
to a man high in official position, and he sat down and 
wrote a letter to all the chiefs of police in the United 
States, in order that he might deliver that prodigal son 
into the arms of his broken-hearted father. A few days 
ago it was found that the father was in California. I 
understand that son is now on the way to meet him, and 
it will be the parable of the prodigal son over again 
when they embrace each other, and the father says: 
"Rejoice with me, for this my son was dead and is alive 
again, was lost and is found." I have forgotten the 
name of the father, I have forgotten the name of his son ; 
but I have not forgotten the name of the officer whose 
sympathetic heart beats so loud under his badge of office. 
It was Patrick Campbell, Superintendent of the Brock • 
lyn police. I do not mention these things as a matter of 
city pride, nor as a matter of exultation, but of gratitude 
to God that Brooklyn to-day stands foremost among 
American cities in its freedom from places of iniquity. 
But Brooklyn has a large share of sin. Where do the 
people of Brooklyn go when they propose to commit 
abomination ? To 'New York. I was told in the mid- 
night exploration in New York with the police that 
there are some places almost entirely supported by men 
and women from Brooklyn. We are one city after all — 
one now before the bridge is completed, to be more 
thoroughly one when the bridge is done. 

Well, then, you press me with another question : "Why 
don't the public authorities of New York extirpate these 
haunts of iniquity ?" Before I give you a definite answer 
I want to say that the obstacles in that city are greater 
than in any city on this continent. It is so vast. It is 



59 



THE LEPBBS OF HIGH LIFS. 



the landing-place of European immigration. Its wealth 
is mightj to establish and defend places of iniquity. 
Twice a year there are incursions of people from all 
parts of the land coming on the spring and the fall trade. 
It requires twenty times the municipal energy to keep 
order in ^^"ew York that it does in any city from Port- 
land to San Francisco. But still you pursue me with 
the question, and I am to answer it by telling you that 
there is infinite fault and immensity of blame to be 
divided between three parties. First, the police of ^^ew 
York city. So far as I know them they are courteous 
gentlemen. They have had great discouragement, they 
tell me, in the fact that when they arrest crime and 
bring it before the courts the witnesses will not appear 
lest they criminate themselves. They tell me also that 
they have been discouraged by the fact that so many 
suits have been brought against them for damages. But 
after all, my friends, they must take their share of blame. 
I have come to the conclusion, after much research and 
investigation, that there are captains of police in ]N^ew 
York who are in complicity with crime — men who 
make thousands of dollars a year for the simple 
fact that they will not tell, and will permit places of 
iniquity to stand month after month, and year after year. 
I am told that there are captains of police in New York 
who get a percentage on every bottle of wine sold in the 
haunts of death, and that they get a revenue from all the 
shambles of sin. What a state of things this is! In the 
Twenty-ninth precinct of New York there are one hun- 
dred and twenty-one dens of death. Night after night, 
month after month, year after year, untouched. In West 
Twenty-sixth street and West Twenty-seventh street and 
West Thirty-first street there are whole blocks that are 
a pandemonium. There are between five and six huu- 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 



53 



ctted dens of darkness in the city of New York, where 
there are 2,500 policemen. Not long ago there was a 
masquerade ball in which the masculine and feminine 
offenders of society were the participants, and some of 
the police danced in the masquerade and distributed the 
prizes! There is the grandest opportunity that has ever 
opened, for any American, open now. It is for that man 
in high official position who shall get into his stirrups 
and say, "Men, follow?" and who shall in one night 
sweep around and take all of these leaders of iniquity, 
whether on suspicion or on positive proof, saying, " I'll 
take the responsibility, come on! I put my private 
property and my political aspirations and my life into 
this crusade against the powers of darkness." That man 
would be Mayor of the city of New York. That man 
would be fit to be President of the United States. 

But the second part of the blame I must put at the 
door of the District Attorney of New York. I under- 
stand he is an honorable gentleman, but he has not time 
to attend to all these cases. Literally, there are thousands 
of cases unpursued for lack of time. Now, I say, it is 
the business of New York to give assistants, and clerks, 
and help to the District Attorney until all these places 
shall go down in quick retribution. 

But the third part of the blame, and the heaviest part 
of it, I put on the moral and Christian people of our 
cities, who are guilty of most culpable indifference on 
this whole subject. When Tweed stole his millions 
large audiences were assembled in indignation, Charles 
O'Conor was retained, committees of safety and investi- 
gation were appointed, and a great stir made; but night 
by night there is a theft and a burglary of city morals 
as much worse than Tweed's robberies as his were worse 
than common shop-lifting, and it has very little opposi- 



54 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIPS. 



tion. I tell you what New York wants ; it wants indig- 
nation meetings in Cooper Institute and Academy of 
Music and Chickering and Irving Halls to compel the 
public authorities to do their work and to send the police, 
with clubs and lanterns and revolvers, to turn off tha 
colored lights of the dance -ho uses, and to mark for con- 
fiscation the trunks and wardrobes and furniture and 
scenery, and to gather up all the keepers, and all the in- 
mates, and all the patrons, and march them out to the 
Tombs, fife and drum sounding tlie Rogue's March. 

While there are men smoking their cigarettes, with 
their feet on Turkish divans, shocked that a minister of 
religion should explore and expose the iniquity of city 
life, there are raging underneath our great cities a Coto- 
paxi, a Stromboli,a Yesuvius, ready to bury us in ashes and 
scoria deeper than that which overwhelmed Pompeii and 
Herculaneum. Oh ! I wish the time would come for the 
plowshare of public indignation to push through and 
rip up and turn under those parts »of New York which 
are the plague of the nation. Now is the time to hitch 
up the team to this plowshare. In this time, when Mr. 
Cooper is Mayor, and Mr. Kelly is Comptroller, and Mr. 
Nichols is Police Commissioner, and Superintendent 
Walling wears the badge of office, and there is on the 
judicial benches of New York an array of the best men 
that have ever occupied those positions since the founda- 
tion of the city — Recorder Hackett, Police Magistrates 
Kilbreth, Wandell, Morgan and Duffy ; such men as 
Gildersleeve, and Sutherland, and Davis, and Curtis ; 
and on the United States Court bench in New York 
such men as Benedict, and Blatchford, and Choate — now 
is the time to make an extirpation of iniquity. Now is 
the time for a great crusade, and for the people of our cities 
in great public assemblages to say to police authority: 



THE LEPERS OP HIGH LIFE. 



55 



" Go ahead, and we will back you with our lives, our for- 
tunes, and our sacred honor." 

I must adjourn until next Sabbath morning much of 
what I wanted to say about certain forms of iniquity 
which I saw rampant in the night of my exploration 
with the city officials. But before I stop this morning 
I want to have one word with a class of men with whom 
people have so little patience that they never get a kind 
word of invitation. I mean the men who have forsaken 
their homes. Oh ! my brother, return. You say : " I 
can't ; I have no home ; my home is broken up." Re- 
establish your home. It has been done in other cases, 
why may it not be done in your case '^ " Oh," you say, 
" we parted for life ; we have divided our property ; we 
have divided our effects." I ask you, did you divide the 
marriage ring of that bright day when you started life 
together ? Did you divide your family Bible? If so, 
where did you divide it'i Across the Old Testament, 
where the Ten Commandments denounce your sin, or 
across the New Testament, where Christ says : " Blessed 
are the pure in heart?" Or did you divide it between 
the Old and the New Testaments, right across the family 
record of weddings and births and deaths ? Did you 
divide the cradle in which you rocked your first born? 
Did you divide the little grave in the cemetery, over 
which you stood with linked arms, looking down in awful 
bereavement? Above all, I ask you, did you divide your 
hope for heaven, so that there is no full hope left for 
either of you? Go back! There may be a great gulf 
between you and once happy domesticity; but Christ 
will bridge that gulf. It may be a bridge of sighs. Turn 
toward it. Pnt your foot on the over-arching span. 
Hear it ! It is a voice unrolling from the throne: " He 
that overcomet^ shall inherit ail things, and I will ba 



56 



THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE. 



unto him a God, and he shall be my son ; but the un« 
believing, and the sorcerers, and the whoremongers, and 
the adulterers, and the idolators, and all liars shall have 
their part in the lake which biirneth with fire and brim- 
stone — which is the second death 



THE (iATEb Ob HELL. 



57 



CHAPTER III. 

THE GATES OF HELL. 

"The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. "-St. Matthew xvi : 18. 

It is only 10 o'clock," said the officer of the law, as 
we got into the carriage for the midnight exploration — 
" it is only 10 o'clock, and it is too early to see the places 
that we wish to see^ for the theaters have not yet let out." 
I said, " What do you mean by that ?" Well," he said, 
. " the places of iniquity are not in full blast until the 
• people have time to arrive from the theaters." So we 
loitered on, and the officer told the driver to stop on a 
street where is one of the costliest and most brilliant 
gambling-houses in the city of New York. As we came 
up in front all seemed dark. The blinds were down ; 
the door was guarded ; but after a whispering of the 
officer with the guard at the door, we were admitted into 
the hall, and thence into the parlors, around one table 
finding eight or ten men in mid-life, well-dressed — all 
the work going on in silence, save the noise of the 
rattling " chips " on the gaming-table in one parlor, and 
the revolving ball of the roulette table in the other par- 
lor. Some of these men, we were told, had served terms 
in prison; some were ship-wrecked bankers and brokers 
and money-dealers, and some were going their first 
rounds of vice — but all intent upon the table, as large or 
small fortunes moved up and down before them. Oh! 
there was something awfully solemn in the silence — the 
intense ga?^, the suppressed emotioi) of the players. No 



one looked up. They all had money in the rapids, and 
I have no doubt some saw, as they sat there, horses and 
carriages, and houses and lands, and home and family 
rushing down into the vortex. A man's life would not 
have been worth a farthing in that presence had he not 
been accompanied by the police, if he had been supposed 
to be on a Christian errand of observation. Some of 
these men went by private key, some went in by careful 
introduction, some were taken in by the patrons of the 
establishment. The officer of the law told me: " None 
get in here except by police m ndate, or by some letter 
of a patron." While we were there a young man came 
in, put his money down on the roulette-table, and lost; 
put more money down on the roulette-table, and lost ; 
put more money down on the roulette- table, and lost; 
then feeling in his pockets for more money, finding none, 
in severe silence he turned his back upon the scene and 
passed out. All the literature about the costly magnifi- 
cence of such places is untrue. Men kept their hats on 
and smoked, and there was nothing in the upholstery or 
the furniture to forbid. While we stood there men lost 
their property and lost their souls. Oh ! merciless place. 
Not once in all the history of that gaming-house has 
there been one word of sympathy uttered for the losers 
at the game. Sir Horace Walpole said that a man 
dropped dead in front of one of the club-houses of Lon- 
don; his body was carried into the club-house, and the 
members of the club began immediately to bet as to 
whether he were dead or alive, and when it was proposed 
to test the matter by bleeding him, it was only hindered 
by the suggestion that it would be unfair to some of the 
players! In these gaming-houses of our cities, m en have 
their property wrung away from them, and then they 
go out, some of them to drown their grief in strong 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



drink, some to plj the counterfeiter's pen, and so restore 
their fortunes, some resort to the suicide's revolver, but 
all going down, and that work proceeds day by day, and 
night by night, until it is estimated that every day in 
Christendom eighty million dollars pass from hand to 
hand through gambling practices, and every year in 
Christendom one hundred and twenty-three billion, one 
hundred million dollars change hands in that way. 

" But," I said, " it is 11 o'clock, and we must be off." 
We passed out into the hallway and so into the street, 
the burly guard slamming the door of the house after us, 
and we got into the carriage and rolled on toward the 
gates of hell. You know about the gates of heaven. 
You have often heard them preached about. There are 
three to each point of the compass. On the north, three 
gates; on the south, three gates; on the east, three 
gates ; on the west, three gates ; and each gate is of solid 
pearl. Oh! gateof heaven; may we all get into it. But 
who shall describe the gates of hell spoken of in my text? 
These gates are burnished until they sparkle and glisten 
in the gas-light. They are mighty, and set in sockets 
of deep and dreadful masonry. They are high, so that 
those who are in may not clamber over and get out. 
They are heavy, but they swing easily in to let those go 
in who are to be destroyed. Well, my friends, it is 
always safe to go where God tells you to go, and God 
had told me to go through these gates of hell, and ex- 
plore and report, and, taking three of the high police 
authorities and two of the elders of my church, I went 
in, and I am here this morning to sketch the gates of 
hell. I remember, when the Franco-German war was 
going on, that I stood one day in Paris looking at the 
gates of the Tuilleries, and I was so absorbed in the sculp- 
turing at the top of the gates — the masonry and the 



THB GATES OF HELL. 



bronze — that I forgot myself, and after awhile, looking 
down, I saw that there were officers of the law scrutinizing 
me, supposing, no doubt, I was a German, and looking 
at those gates for adverse purposes. But, my friends, 
we shall not stand looking at the outside of the gates of 
hell. Through this midnight exploration I shall tell 
you of both sides, and I shall tell you what those gates 
are made of. With the hammer of God's truth I shall 
pound on the brazen panels, and with the lantern of 
God's truth I shall flash a light upon the shining 
hinges. 

Gate the first: Impure literature. Anthony Com- 
stock seized twenty tons of bad books, plates, and letter- 
press, and when our Professor Cochran, of the Poly- 
technic Institute, poured the destructive acids on those 
plates, they smoked in the righteous annihilation. And 
yet a great deal of the bad literature of the day is not 
gripped of the law. It is strewn in your parlors; it is 
in your libraries. Some of your children read it at night 
after they have retired, the gas-burner swung as near as 
possible to their pillow. Much of this literature is un- 
der the title of scientific information. A book accent 
with one of these infernal books, glossed over with scien- 
tific nomenclature, went into a hotel and sold in one day 
a hundred copies, and sold them all to women! It is 
appalling that men and women who can get through 
their family physician all the useful information they 
may need, and without any contamination, should wade 
chin deep through such accursed literature under the 
plea of getting' useful knowledge, and that printing- 
presses, hoping to be called decent, lend themselves to 
this infamy. Fathers and mothers, be not deceived by 
the title, "medical works." Nine-tenths of those books 
come hot from the lost world, though they may have on 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



them the names of the publishing-houses of New York 
and Philadelphia. Then there is all the novelette litera- 
ture of the day flung over the land by the million. As 
there are good novels that are long, so I suppose there 
may be good novels that are short, and so there may be 
a good novelette, but it is the exception. No one — mark 
this — no one systematically reads the average novelette 
of this day and keeps either integrity or virtue. The 
most of these novelettes are written by broken-down 
literary men for small compensation, on the principle 
that, having failed in literature elevated and pure, they 
hope to succeed in the tainted and the nasty. Oh! this 
is a wide gate of hell. Every panel is made out of a bad 
book or newspaper. Every hinge is the interjoined type 
of a corrupt printing-press. Every bolt or lock of that 
gate is made out of the plate of an unclean pictorial. In 
other words, there are a million men and women in the 
United States to-day reading themselves into hell ! When 
in your own beautiful city a prosperous family fell into 
ruins through the misdeeds of one of its members, the 
amazed mother said to the ofiicer of the law : Why, I 
never supposed there was anything wrong. I never 
thought there could be anything wrong." Then she sat 
weeping in silence for some time, and said: "Oh! I 
have got it now! I know, I now! I found in her 
bureau after she went away a bad book. That's what 
slew her." These leprous booksellers have gathered up 
the catalogues of all the male and female seminaries in 
the United States, catalogues containing the names and 
the residences of all the students, and circulars of death 
are sent to every one, without any exception. Can you 
imagine anything more deafchful ? There is not a young 
person, male or female, or an old person, who has not 
had offered to him or her a bad book or a bad picture. 



62 



THB GATES OF HSLL> 



Scour your house to find out whether there are any of 
these adders coiled on your parlor center-table, or coiled 
amid the toilet set on the dressing-case." I adjure you 
before the sun goes down to explore your family nbraries 
with an inexorable scrutiny. Remember that ^ne bad 
book or bad picture may do the work for eternity. I 
Want to arouse all your suspicions about novelettes. I 
want to put you on the watch against everything that 
may seem like surreptitious correspondence through the 
postoffice. I want you to understand that impure litera- 
ture is one of the broadest, highest, mightiest gates of 
the lost. 

Gate the second : The dissolute dance. You shall not 
divert me to the general subject of dancing. Whatever 
you may think of the parlor dance, or the methodic mo- . 
tion of the body to sounds of music in the family or 
the social circle, I am not now discussing that question. 
I want you to unite with me this morning in recogniz- 
ing the fact that there is a dissolute dance. You know 
of what I speak. It is seen not only in the low haunts 
of death, but in elegant mansions. It is the first step to 
eternal ruin for a great multitude of both sexes. You 
know, my friends, what postures, and attitudes, and fig- 
ures are suggested of the devil. They who glide into 
the dissolute dance glide over an inclined plane, and the 
dance is swifter and swifter, wilder and wilder, -until 
with the speed of lightning they whirl off the edges of 
a decent life into a fiery future. This gate of hell swings 
across the Axminster of many a fine parlor, and across 
the ball-room of the summer watering-place. You have 
no right, my brother, my sister — you have no right to 
take an attitude to the sound of music which would be 
unbecoming in the absence of music. 'No Chickering 
grand of city parlor or fiddle of mountain picnic can 
consecrate that which God hath cursed. 



THE GATES OF HELL. . 63 

Gate the third: Indiscreet apparel. The attire of 
woman for the last four or five years has been beautiful 
and graceful beyond anything I have known; but there 
are those who will always carry that which is right into 
the extraordinary and indiscreet. I am told that there 
is a fashion about to come in upon us that is shocking 
to all righteousness. I charge Christian women, neither 
by style of dress nor adjustment of apparel, to become 
administrative of evil. Perhaps none else will dare to 
tell you, so I will tell you that there are multitudes of 
men who owe their eternal damnation to the boldness 
of womanly attire. Show me the fashion-plates of any 
age between this and the time of Louis XYI., of France, 
and Henry YIII., of England, and I will tell you the 
type of morals or immorals of that age or that year. 
No exception to it. Modest apparel means a righteous 
people. Immodest apparel always means a contaminated 
and depraved society. You wonder that the city of Tyre 
was destroyed with such a terrible destruction. Have 
you ever seen the fashion-plate of the city of Tyre? I 
will show it to you: 

"Moreover, the Lord saith, because the daughters of Zion are 
haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walk- 
ing and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, 
in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling 
ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like 
the moon, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, 
and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins." 

That is the fashion-plate of ancient Tyre. And do 
you wonder that the Lord God in His indignation 
blotted out the city, so that fishermen to-day spread their 
nets where that city once stood? 

Gate the fourth: Alcoholic beverage. In our mid- 
night exploration we saw that all the scenes of wicked- 
ness were under the enchantment of the wine-cup. That 



64 



THE GATES OF HBLL. 



was what the waitresses carried on the platter. That 
was what glowed on the table. That was what shone in 
illuminated gardens. That was what flushed the cheeks 
of the patrons who came in. That was what staggered 
the step of the patrons as they went out. Oh! the wine- 
cup is the patron of impurity. The officers of the law 
that night told us that nearly all the men who go into 
the shambles of death go in intoxicated, the mental and 
the spiritual abolished, that the brute may triumph. 
Tell me that a young man drinks, and I know the whole 
story. If he become a captive of the wine-cup, he will 
become a captive of all other vices; only give him time. 
'No one ever runs drunkenness alone. That is a car- 
rion-crow that goes in a flock, and when you see that 
beak ahead, you may know the other beaks are coming. 
In other words, the wine-cup unbalances and dethrones 
one's better judgment, and leaves one the prey of all evil 
appetites that may choose to alight upon his soul. 
There is not a place of any kind of sin in the United 
States to-day that does not flnd its chief abettor in the 
chalice of inebriacy. There is either a drinking-bar 
before, or one behind, or one above, or one underneath. 
The officers of the law said to me that night: "These 
people escape legal penalty because they are all licensed 
to sell liquor." Then I said within myself, " The courts 
that license the sale of strong drink, license gambling- 
houses, license libertinism, license disease, license death, 
license all sufferings, all crimes, all despoliations, all 
disasters, all murders, all woe. It is the courts and the 
Legislature that are swinging wide open this grinding, 
creaky, stupendous gate of the lost." 

But you say, "You have described these gates of hell 
apd shown us how they swing in to allow the entrance 
of the doomed. Will you not, please, before you get 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



66* 



through the sermon, tell us how these gates of hell may 
swing out to allow the escape of the penitent?" I reply, 
but very few escape. Of the thousand that go in nine 
hundred and ninety-nine perish. Suppose one of these 
wanderers should knock at your door, would you admit 
her? Suppose you knew where she came from, would 
you ask her to sit down at your dining- table? Would 
you ask her to become the governess of your children? 
"Would you introduce her among your acquaintanceships? 
Would you take the responsibility of pulling on the out- 
side of the gate of hell while she pushed on the inside of 
that gate trying to get out? You would not, not one of 
a thousand of you that would dare to do it. You write 
beautiful poetry over her sorrows and weep over her 
misfortunes, but give her practical help you never will. 
There is not one person out of a thousand that will — 
there is not one out of five thousand that has — come so 
near the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ as to dare to 
help one of these fallen souls. But you say, "Are there 
no ways by which the wanderer may escape?" Oh, yes; 
three or four. The one way is the sewing-girPs garret, 
dingy, cold, hunger-blasted. But you say, "Is there no 
other way for her to escape?" Oh, yes. Another way 
is the street that leads to the East river, at midnight, the 
end of the city dock, the moon shining down on the 
water making it look so smooth she wonders if it is deep 
enough. It is. I^o boatman near enough to hear the 
plunge. No watchman near enough to pick her out 
before she sinks the third time. No other way? Yes. 
By the curve of the Hudson River Eailroad at the point 
where the engineer of the lightning express train cannot 
see a hundred yards ahead to the form that lies across 
the track. He may whistle "down brakes," but not soon 
enough to disappoint the one who seeks her death. But 



"66 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



you. say, "Isn't God good, and won't he forgive?' Yes; 
but man will not, woman will not, society will not. The 
church of God sa;;^s it will, but it will not. Our work, 
then, must be prevention rather than cure. Standing here 
telling this story to-day, it is not so much in the hope that 
I will persuade one who has dashed down a thousand 
feet over the rocks to crawl up again into life and light, 
but it is to alarm those who are coming too near the 
edges. Have you ever listened to hear the lamentation 
that rings up from those far depths? 

" Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell, 
Fell like a snowflake, from heaven to hell ; 
Fell, to be trampled as filth of the street ; 
Fell, to be scoflTed at, be spit on, and beat. 
Pleading, cursing, begging to die. 
Selling my soul to whoever would buy ; 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, 
Hating the living and fearing the dead." 

But you say. "What can be the practical use of this 
course of sermons?" I say, much everywhere. I am 
greatly obliged to those gentlemen of the press who have 
fairly reported what I have said on these occasions, and 
the press of this city and New York, and of the other 
prominent cities. I thank you for the almost universal 
fairness with which you have presented what I have had 
to say. Of course, among the educated and refined 
journalists who sit at these tables, and have been sitting 
here for four or five years, there will be a fool or two 
that does not understand his business, but that ousrht 
not to discredit the grand newspaper printing-press. I 
thank also, those who have by letters cheered me in this 
work — letters coming from all parts of the land, from 
Christian reformers telling me to go on in the work 
which I have undertaken. Never so many letters in my 
life have I received. Perhaps one out of the hundred 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



.67 



condemnatory, as one I got yesterday from a man who 
said lie thought my sermons would do great damage in 
the fact that they would arouse the suspicion of domestic 
circles as to where the head of the family was spending 
his evenings! I was sorry it was an anonymous letter^ 
for I should have written to that man's wife telling her 
to put a detective on her husband's track, for I knew 
right away he was going to bad places ! My friends, 
you say, " It is not possible to do anything with these 
stalwart iniquities; you cannot wrestle them, down." 
Stupid man, read my text: "The gates of hell shall not 
prevail against the church." Those gates of hell are to 
be prostrated just as certainly as God and the Bible are 
true, but it will not be done until Christian men and 
women, quitting their prudery and squeamishness in 
this matter, rally the whole Christian sentiment of the 
church and assail these great evils of society. The Bible 
utters its denunciation in this direction again and again, 
and yet the piety of the day is such a namby-pamby, 
emetic sort of a thing that you cannot even quote Scrip- 
ture without making somebody restless.* As long as 
this holy imbecility reigns in the church of God, sin will 
laugh you to scorn. I do not know but that before the 
church wakes up matters will get worse and worse, and 
that there will have to be one lamb sacrificed from each 
of the most carefully-guarded folds, and the wave of 
uncleanness dash to the spire of the village church and 
the top of the cathedral pillar. Prophets and patriarchs^ 
and apostles and evangelists,and Christ himself have thun- 
dered against these sins as against no other, and yet there 
are those who think we ought to take, when we speak of 
these subjects, a tone apologetic. I put my foot on all 
the conventional rhetoric on this subject, and I tell you 
plainly that unless you give up that sin your doom is 



68 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



sealed, and world without end you will be chased by the 
anathemas of an incensed God. I rally you under the 
cheerful propliecy of the text; I rally you to a besiege- 
ment of the gates of hell. We want in this besieg- 
ing host no soft sentimentalists, but men who are willing 
to give and take hard knocks. The gates of Gaza were 
carried off, the gates of Thebes were battered down, the 
gates of Babylon were destroyed, and the gates of hell 
are going to be prostrated. The Christianized printing- 
press will be rolled up as the chief battering-ram. Then 
there will be a long list of aroused pulpits, which shall 
be assailing fortresses, and God's red-hot truth shall be 
the flying ammunition of the contest; and the sappers 
and the miners will lay the train under these foundations 
of sin, and at just the right time God, who leads on the 
fray, will cry, " Down with the gates!" and the explo- 
sion beneath will be answered by all the trumpets of God 
on high celebrating universal victory. But there may be 
in this house one wanderer that would like to have a 
kind word calling homeward, and I cannot sit down until 
I have uttered that word. I have told you that society 
has no mercy. Did I hint, at an earlier point in this 
subject, that God will have mercy upon any wanderer 
who would like to come back to the heart of infinite 
love? 

A cold Christmas night in a farm-house. Father 
comes in from the barn, knocks the snow from his shoes, 
and sits down by the fire. The mother sits at the stand 
knitting. She says to him : " Do you remember it is 
anniversary to-night?" The father is angered. He never 
wants any allusion to the fact that one had gone away, 
and the mere suggestion that it was the anniversary of 
that sad event made him quite rough, although the tears 
ran down his cheeks. The old house-dog, that had played 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



69 



with the wanderer when she was a child, came up and 
put his head on the old man's knee, but he roughly 
repulsed the dog. He wants nothing to remind Iiim of 
the anniversary day. The following incident was told me. 
It was a cold winter night in a city church. It is Christ- 
mas night. They have been decorating the sanctuary. A 
lost wanderer of the street, with thin shawl about her, at- 
tracted by the warmth and light, comes in and sits near 
the door. The minister of religion is preaching of Him 
who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for 
our iniquities, and the poor soul by the door said: "Why, 
that must mean me; 'mercy for the chief of sinners; 
bruised for our iniquities ; wounded for our transgres- 
sions.' " The music that night in the sanctuary brought 
back the old hymn which she used to sing when with 
father and mother she worshiped God in the village 
church. The service over, the minister went down the 
aisle. She said to him: " Were those words for me? 
^Wounded for our transgressions.' Was that for me?" 
The man of God understood her not. He knew not 
how to comfort a shipwrecked soul, and he passed on and 
• he passed out. The poor wanderer followed into the 
street. "What are you doing here, Meg?" said the 
police. " What are you doing hereto-night?" "Oh!" 
she replied, " I was in to warm myself;" and then the 
rattling cough came, and she held to the railing until 
the paroxysm was over. She passed on down the street, 
falling from exhaustion ; recovering herself again, unti] 
after a while she reached the outskirts of the city and 
passed on into the country road. It seemed so familiar, 
she kept on the road, and she saw in the distance a light 
in the window. Ah! that light had been gleaming there 
every night since she went away. On that country 
road she passed until she came to the garden gate. She 



70 



THE GATES OF HELL. 



opened it and passed up the path where she played in 
childhood. She came to the steps and looked in at the 
fire on the hearth. Then she put her fingers to the latch. 
Oh! if that door had been locked she would have per- 
ished on the threshold, for she was near to death. But 
that door had not been locked since the time she went 
away. She pushed open the door. She went in and laid 
down on the hearth by the fire. The old house-dog 
growled as he saw her enter, but there was something in 
the voice he recognized, and he frisked about her until 
he almost pushed her down in his joy. In the morning 
the mother came down, and she saw a bundle of rags on 
the hearth; but when the face was uplifted, she knew it, 
and it was no more old Meg of the street. Throwing 
her arms around the returned prodigal, she cried, "Oh! 
Maggie." The child threw her arms around her mother's 
neck, and said: '^Oh! Mother," and while they were 
embraced a rugged form towered above them. It was 
the father. The severity all gone out of his face, he 
stooped and took her up tenderly and carried her to 
mother's room, and laid her down on mother's bed, for 
she was dying. Then the lost one, looking up into her 
mother's face, said : " 'Wounded for our transgressions 
and bruised for our iniquities!" Mother, do you think 
that means me " Oh, yes, my darling," said the 
mother, " if mother is so glad to get you back, don't you 
think God is glad to get you back?" And there she 
lay dying, and all her dreams and all her prayers were 
filled with the words, ''Wounded for our transgressions, 
bruised for our iniquities," until just before the moment 
of her departure, her face lighted up, showing the pardon 
of God had dropped upon her soul. And there she slept 
away on the bosom of a pardoning Jesus. So the Lord 
took back one whom the world rejected. 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 



CHAPTER lY. 

WHOM I SAW AND WHOM I MISSED. 

* 

"And the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits."— Genesis xiv: x^. 
About six months a^o, a gentleman in Augusta, Geor- 
gia, wrote me asking me to preach from this text, and 
the time has come for the subject. The neck of an army 
had been broken by falling into these half-hidden slime- 
j)its. How deep they were, or how vile, or how hard to 
^et out of, we are not told; but the whole scene is so far 
distant in the past that we have not half as much inter- 
est in this statement of the text as we have in the 
announcement that our American cities are full of slime- 
pits, and tens of thousands of people are falling in them 
night by night. Recently, in the name of God, I ex- 
plored some of these slime-pits. Why did I do so ? In 
April last^ seated in the editorial rooms of one of the 
chief daily newspapers of I^ew York, the editor said to 
me: ''Mr. Talmage, you clergymen are at great disad- 
vantage when you come to battle iniquity, for you don't 
know what you are talking about, and we laymen are 
aware of the fact that you don't know of what you are 
talking; now, if you would like to make a personal inves- 
tigation, I will see that you shall get the highest official 
escort." I thanked him, accepted the invitation, and 
told him that this autumn I would begin the tour. The • 
fact was that I had for a long time wanted to say some 
words of warning and invitation to the young men of 
this country, and I felt if my course of sermons was 
preceded by a tour of this sort I should not only be bet- 



72 



WHOM I SAWj AND WHOM I MISSED. 



ter acquainted with the subject, but I should have the 
whole country for an audience; and it has been a d^elib- 
erate plan of my ministry, whenever I am going to try 
to do anything especial for Grod, or humanity, or the 
church, to do it in suc^i a way that the devil will always 
advertise it free gratis for nothing! That was the reason 
I gave two weeks' previous notice of my pulpit, inten- 
tions. The result has been satisfactory. 

Standing within those purlieus of death, under the 
command of the police and in their company, I was as 
much surprised at the people whom I missed as at the 
people whom I saw. I saw bankers there, and brokers 
there, and merchants there, and men of all classes and 
occupations who have leisure, there; but there was one 
class of persons that I missed. I looked for them all 
up and down the galleries, and amid the illumined 
gardens, and all up and down the staircases of death. 
I saw not one of them. I mean the hard-working classes, 
the laboring classes, of our great cities. You tell me 
they could not afford to go there. They could. Entrance, 
twenty-five cents. They could have gone there if they 
had a mind to; but the simple fact is that hard work is 
a friend to good morals. The men who toil from early 
morn until late at night when they go home are tired 
out, and want to sit down and rest, or to saunter out with 
their families along the street, or to pass into some quiet 
place of amusement where they will not be ashamed to 
take wife or daughter. The busy populations of these 
cities are the moral populations. I observed on the 
. night of our exploration that the places of dissipation 
are chiefly supported by the men who go to business at 
9 and 10 o'clock in the morning and get through at 3 
and 4 in the afternoon. They have plenty of time to go 
to destruction in and plenty of money to buy a through 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 



78 



ticket on the Grand Trunk Eailroad to perdition, stop- 
ping at no depot until they get to the eternal smash-up! 
Those are the fortunate and divinely-blessed young men 
who have to breakfast early and take supper late, and 
have the entire interregnum filled up with work that blis- 
ters the hands, and makes the legs ache and the brain 
weary. There is no chance for the morals of that young 
man who has plenty of money and no occupation. You 
may go from Central Park to the Battery, or you may 
go from Fulton Street Ferry, Brooklyn, out to South 
Bushwick, or out to Hunter's Point, or out to Gowanus, 
and you will not find one young man of that kind who 
has not already achieved his ruin, or who is not* on the 
way thereto at the rate of sixty miles the hour. Those are 
not the favored and divinely-blessed young men who 
come and go as they will, and who have their pocket- 
case full of the best cigars, and who dine at Delmonico's, 
and who dress in the tip- top of fashion, their garments 
a little tighter or looser or broader striped than others, 
their mustaches twisted with stiffer cosmetic, and their 
hair redolent with costly pomatum, and have their hat 
set farthest over on the right ear, and who have boots 
fitting the foot with exquisite torture, and who have 
liandkerchief soaked with musk, and patchouli, and white 
rose, and new-mown hay, and "balm of a thousand flow- 
ers;" but those are the fortunate young men who have 
to work hard for a living. Give a young man plenty of 
wines, and plenty of cigars, and plenty of fine horses, 
and Satan has no anxiety about that man's coming out 
at his place. He ceases to watch him, only giving direc- 
tions about his reception when he shall arrive at the end 
of the journey. If, on the night of our exploration, I 
• had called the roll of all the laboring men of these cities, 
I would have received no answer, for the simple reason 



74 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 



the J were not there to answer. I was not more surprised 
at the people whom I saw there than I was surprised at 
the people whom I missed. Oh! man, if you have an 
occupation by which you are wearied every night of your 
life, thank God, for it is the mightiest preservative 
against evil. 

But by that time the clock of old Trinity Church was 
striking one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 
ten, eleven, twelve — midnight ! And with the police and 
two elders of my church we sat down at the table in the 
galleries and looked off upon the vortex of death. The 
music in full blast; the dance in wildest whirl; the wine 
foaming to the lip of the glass. Midnight on earth is 
midnoon in hell. All the demons of the pit were at 
that moment holding high carnival. The blue calcium 
light suggested the burning brimstone of the pit. Seated 
there, at that hour, in that awful place, you ask me, as I 
have frequently been asked, "What were the emotions 
that went through your heart?" And I shall give the 
rest of my morning's sermon to telling you how I felt. 

First of all, as at no death-bed or railroad disaster did 
I feel an overwhelming sense of pity. Why were we 
there as Christian explorers, while those lost souls were 
there as participators? If they had enjoyed the same 
healthful and Christian surroundings which we have had 
all our days, and we had been thrown amid the contamin- 
ations which have destroyed them, the case would have 
been the reverse, and they would have been the specta- 
tors and we the actors in that awful tragedy of the 
damned. As I sat there I could not keep back the 
tears — tears of gratitude to God for his protecting 
grace — tears of compassion for those who had fallen so 
low. The difference in moral navigation had been the * 
difference in the way the wind blew. The wind of temp- 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 75 

tation drove them on the rocks. The wind of God's 
mercy drove us out on a fair sea. There are men and 
women so merciless in their criticism of the fallen that 
you might think that God had made them in an especial 
mold, and that they liave no capacity for evil, and yet if 
they had been subjected to the same allurements, instead 
of stopping at the up-town haunts of iniquity, they 
would at this hour have been wallowing amid the hor- 
rors of Arch Block, or shrieking with delirium tremens 
in the cell of a police station. Instead of boasting over 
your purity and your integrity and your sobriety, you 
had better be thanking God for his grace, lest sometime 
the Lord should let you loose and you find out how 
much better you are than others naturally. I will take 
the best-tempered man in this house, the most honest 
man in this city, and I will venture the opinion in regard 
to him that, surround him with all the adequate circum- 
stances of temptation, and the Lord let him loose, he 
would become a thief, a gambler, a sot, a rake, a wharf- 
rat. Instead of boasting over our superiority, and over 
the fact that there is no capacity in us of evil, I would 
rather have for my epitaph that one word which Duncan 
Matthewson, the Scotch evangelist, ordered chiseled on 
his tombstone, the name, and the one word, "Kept." 

Again: Seated in that gallery of death, and looking 
out on that maelstrom of iniquity, I thought to myself, 
"There ! that young man was once the pride of the city 
home. Paternal care watched him ; maternal love bent 
over him; sisterly affection surrounded him. He was 
once taken to the altar and consecrated in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost; but he went away. This very moment,'' 
I thought to myself, " there are hearts aching for that 
you% man's return. Father and mother are sitting up 



76 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MI88SD. 



for him." You say, "He has a night-key, and he can 
get in without their help. Why do not those parents 
go sound to sleep?" What! Is there any sleep for* 
parents who suspect a son is drifting up and down amid 
the dissipations of a great city? They may weep, they 
may pray, they may Wring their hands, but sleep they 
cannot. Ah! they have done and suffered too much for 
that boy to give him up now. They turn up the light 
and look at the photograph of him when he was young 
and untempted. They stand at the window to see if he 
is coming up the street. They hear the watchman's 
rattle, but no sound of returning boy. I felt that night 
as if I could put my hand on the shoulder of that young • 
man, and, with a voice that would sound all through 
those temples of sin, say to him, "Go home, young man; 
your father is waiting for you. Your mother is waiting 
for you. God is waiting for you. All heaven is wait- 
ing for you. Go home! By the tears wept over your 
waywardness, by the prayers offered for your salvation, 
by the midnight watching over you when you had scarlet 
fever and diphtheria, by the blood of the Son of God, by 
the judgment day when you must give answer for what 
you have been doing here to-night, go home!" But I did 
not say this, lest it interfere with my work, and I waited 
to get on this platform, where, perhaps, instead of saving 
one young man, God helping me, I might save a thousand 
young men; and the cry of alarm which I suppressed 
that night, I let loose to-day in the hearing of this 
people. 

Seated in that gallery of death, and looking off upon 
the destruction, I bethought myself also, "These are 
the fragments of broken homes." A home is a com- 
plete thing, and if one member of it wander off, then the 
home is broken. And sitting there, I said: "Here 4hey 



WHOM I- SAW, iAND WHOM I MISSED. 



77 



are, broken family altars, broken wedding-rings, broken 
vows, broken anticipations, broken hearts." And, as I 
looked off, the dance became wilder and more unre- 
strained, until it seemed as if the floor broke through 
and the revelers were plunged into a depth from which 
they may never rise, and all these broken families came 
around the brink and seemed to cry out: " Come back, 
father! Oome back, mother! Come back, my son! Come 
back, my daughter ! Come back, my sister !" But no voices 
returned, and the sound of the feet of the dancers grew 
fainter and fainter, and stopped, and there was thick 
darkness. And I said, "What does all this mean?" 
And there came up a great hiss of whispering voices, 
saying, " This is the second death!" . 

But seated there that night, looking off upon that 
scene of death, I bethought myself also, ^* This is only a 
miserable copy of European dissipations." In London 
they have what they call the Argyle, the Cremorne, the 
Strand, the beer-gardens, and a thousand places of 
infamy, and it seems to be the ambition of bad people 
in this country to copy those foreign dissipations. Toady- 
ism when it bows to foreign pretense and to foreign 
equipage and to foreign title is despicable; but toadyism 
is more despicable when it bows to foreign vice. Why, 
you might as well steal the pillow-case of a small-pox 
hospital, or the shovels of a scavenger's cart, or the 
coffin of a leper, as to make theft of these foreign plagues. 
If you want to destroy the people, have some originality 
of destruction ; have an American trap to catch the 
bodies and souls of men, instead of infringing on the 
patented inventions of European iniquity. 

Seated there that night, I also felt that if the good 
people of our cities knew what was going on in these 
haunts of iniquity, they would endure it no longer. 



78 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM . ^□[ftSED. 



The foundations of city life are rotten with iniquity, 
and if the foundations give way the whole structure 
must crumble. If iniquity progresses in the next one 
hundred years in the same ratio that it has pro- 
gressed in the century now closed, there will not be 
a vestige of moral or religious influence left. It is only 
a question of subtraction and. addition. If the people 
knew how the virus is spreading they would stop it. I 
think the time has come for action. I wish that the next 
Mayor of 'New York whether he be Augustus Schell or 
Edward Cooper, may rise up to the height of this posi- 
tion. Eevolution is what we want, and that revolution 
would begin to-morrow if the moral and Christian peo- 
ple of our cities knew of the fires that slumber beneath 
them. Once in a while a glorious city missionary or 
reformer like Mr. Brace or Mr. Yan Meter tells to a 
well-dressed audience in church the troubles that lie 
under our roaring metropolis, and the conventional 
church-goer gives his five dollars for bread, or gives his 
fifty dollars to help support a ragged school, and then 
goes home feeling that the work is done. Oh! ray 
friends, the work will not be accomplished until by the 
force of public opinion the officers of the law shall be 
compelled to execute the law. We are told that the 
twenty-five hundred police of New York cannot put 
down the five or six hundred dens of infamy, to say 
nothing of the gambling-houses and the unlicensed grog- 
shops. I reply, swear me in as a special police and give 
me two hundred police for two nights, and J would 
.break up all the leading haunts of iniquity in these two 
cities, and arrest all their leaders and send such conster- 
nation in the smaller places that they would shu^l up of 
themselves! I do not think I should be afraid of law- 
suits for damages for false imprisonment. What we 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 



79 



want in these cities is a Stonewall Jackson's raid through 
all the places of iniquity. I was persuaded by what I 
saw on that night of my exploration that the keepers of 
all these haunts of iniquity are as afraid as they are of 
death of the police star, and the police club, and the 
police revolver. Hence, I declare that the existence of 
these abominations are to be charged either to police 
cowardice or to police complicity. 

At the close of our journey that night, we got in the 
carriage, and we came out on Broadway, and as we came 
down the street everything seemed silent save the clatter- 
ing hoofs and the wheels of our own conveyance. Look- 
ing down the long line of gaslights, the pavement seemed 
very solitary. The great sea of metropolitan life had 
ebbed, leaving a dry beach ! 'New York asleep ! No ! no ! 
Burglary wide awake. Libertinism wide awake. Mur- 
der wide awake. Ten thousand city iniquities wide 
awake. The click of the decanters in the worst hours of 
the debauch. The harvest of death full. Eternal woe 
the reaper. 

"What is that? Trinity clock striking, one — two. 
"Good night," said the officers of the law, and I re- 
sponded "good night," for they had been very kind, and 
very generous and very helpful to us. "Goodnight." 
And yet, was there ever an adjective more misapplied ? 
Good night! Why, there was no. expletive enough 
scarred and blasted to describe that night. Black night. 
Forsaken night. ITight of man's wickedness and woman's 
overthrow. Night of awful neglect on the part of those 
who might help but do not. For many of those whom 
we had been watching, everlasting night. No hope. 
Ng. rescue. No God. Black night of darkness forever. 
As far off as hell is from heaven was that night distant 
from being a good night. Oh, my friends, what are you 



80 



WHOM I SAW, AISTD WHOM I MISSED. 



going to do in this matter ? Punish the people ? That 
is not my theory. Prevent the people, warn the people, 
hinder the people before they go down. The first phi- 
lanthropist this country ever knew was Edward Living- 
ston, and he wrote these remarkable words in 1833: 

" As prevention in the diseases of the body is less painful, less ex- 
pensive, and more eflacacious than the most skillful cure, so in the 
moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before the profligacy 
assumes tlie shape of crime, to take away from the poor the cause or 
pretense of relieving themselves by fraud or theft, to reform them by 
education, and make their own industry contribute to their support, 
although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual inthe 
suppression of offenses, and more economical, than the best organized 
system of punishment." 

]S"ext Sabbath morning I shall tell yon of my second 
night of exploration. I have only opened the door of 
this great subject with which I hope to stir the cities. 
I have begun, and, God helping me, I will go through. 
Whoever else may be crowded or kept standing, or kept 
outside the doors, I charge the trustees and the ushers 
of this church that they give full elbow-room to all these 
journalists, since each one is another church five times, 
or ten times, or twenty times larger than this august 
assemblage, and it is by the printing-press that the Gos- 
pel of the Son of God is to be yet preached to all the 
world. May the blessing of the Lord God come down 
upon all the editors, and all the reporters, and all the 
compositors, and all the proof-readers, and all the type- 
setters ! 

But, my friends, before the iniquities of our cities 
are closed, my tongue may be silent in death, and 
many who are here this morning may have gone so far 
in sin they cannot get back. You have sometimes been 
walking on the banks of a river, and you have seen a 
man struggling in the water, and you have thrown off 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 81 

your coat and leaped in for tlie rescue. So this morning 
I throw off the robe of pulpit conventionality, and I 
plunge in for .your drowning soul. I have no cross 
words for you. T have only cross words for those who 
would destroy you. I am glad God has not put in my 
hand any one of the thunderbolts of His power, lest I 
might be tempted to hurl it at those who are plotting 
your ruin. I do not give you the tip end of the long 
fingers of the left hand, but I take your hand, hot with 
the fever of indulgences and trembling with last night's 
debauch, into both my hands, and give the heartiest 
grip of invitation and welcome. " Oh," you say, you 
would not shake hands with me if you met me." I 
would. Try me at the foot of this platform and see if I 
will not. I have sometimes said that I would like to die 
with my hand in the hand of my family and my kin- 
dred; but I revoke that wish this morning and say I 
would like to die with my hand in the hand of a return- 
ing sinner, when, with God's help, I am trying to pull 
him up into the glorious liberty of the Gospel. I would 
like that to be my last work on earth. Oh! my brother, 
come back! Do you know that God made Richard Bax- 
ters and J ohn Bunyans and Robert ITewtons out of such 
as you are? Come back! and wash in the deep fountain 
of a Savior's mercy. I do not give you a cup, or a chal- 
ice, or a pitcher with a limited supply to effect your ab- 
lutions. I point you to the five oceans of God's mercy. 
Oh! that the Atlantic and Pacific surges of divine for- 
giveness might roll over your soul. I do not say to you, 
as we said to the officers of the law when we left them 
on Broadway, "Good night." Oh, no. But, as the 
glorious sun of God's forgiveness rides on toward the 
mid heavens, ready to submerge you in warmth and 
light and love, I bid you good morning! Morning of 
6 



82 



WHOM I SAW, AND WHOM I MISSED. 



peace for all your troubles. Morning of liberation for 
all your incarcerations. Morning of resurrection for 
your soul buried in sin. Good morning! Morning for 
the resuscitated household that has been waiting for 
your return. . Morning for the cradle and the crib 
already disgraced with being that of a drunkard's child. 
Morning for the daughter that has trudged off to hard 
work because you did not take care of home. Morning 
for the wife who at forty or fifty ^^ears has the wrinkled 
face, and the stooped shoulder, and the white hair. Morn- 
ing for one. Morning for all Good morning ! In 
God's name, good morning. 

In our last dreadful war the Federals ahd the Con- 
federates were encamped on opposite sides of the Rappa- 
hannock, and one morning the brass band of the JSTorth- 
ern troops played the national air, and all the Northern 
troops cheered and cheered. Then on the opposite side 
of the Kappahannock the brass band of the Confederates 
played " My Maryland" and Dixie," and then all the 
Southern troops cheered and cheered. But after awhile 
one of the bands struck up " Home, Sweet Home," and 
the band on the opposite side of the river took up the 
strain, and when the tune was done the Confederates 
and the Federals all together united, as the tears rolled 
down their cheeks, in one great huzza! huzza! Well, 
my friends, heaven comes very near to-day. It is only 
a stream that divides us — the narrow stream of death — 
and the voices there and the voices here seem to com- 
mingle, and we join trumpets, and hosannahs, and halle- 
lujahs, and the chorus of the united song of earth and 
heaven is, " Home, Sweet Home." Home of bright 
domestic circle on earth. Home of forgiveness in the 
great heart of God. Home of eternal rest in heaven. 
Home ! Home ! Home ! 



CHAPTER V. 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 

The destruction of the poor is their poverty.— Proverbs x: 15. 

On an island nine miles long by two and a half wide 
stands the largest city on this continent — a city mightiest 
for virtue and for vice. Before I get through with this 
series of Sabbath morning discourses, I shall show you 
the midnoon of its magnificent progress and philan- 
thropy, as well as the midnight of its crime and sin. 
Twice in every twenty-four hours our City Hall and old 
Trinity clocks strike twelve — once while business and 
art are in full blast, and once while iniquity is doing its 
uttermost. Both stories must be told. It is pleasanter 
to put on a plaster than to thrust in a probe*/ but it is 
absurd to propose remedies for disease until we have 
taken a diagnosis of that disease. The patient may 
squirm and cringe, and fight back, and resist; but the 
surgeon must go on. Before I get through with these 
Sabbath morning sermons, I shall make you all smile at 
the beautiful things I will say about the grandeur and 
beneficence of this cluster of cities; but my work now is 
excavation and exposure. I have as mu^h amusement 
as any man of my profession can afford to indulge in at 
any one time, in seeing some of the clerical " reformers " 
of this day mount their war-charsjer, dig in their spurs, 
and with glittering lance dash down upon the iniquities 
of cities that have been three or four thousand years 
dead. These men will corner an old sinner of twenty or 
thirty centuries ago, and scalp him, and hang him, and 



84 UNDER THE POLICE LANTEHN. 

cut him to pieces, and then say: " Oh! what great things 
have been done." With amazing prowess, they throw 
sulphur at Sodom, and fire at Gomorrah, and worms at 
Herod, and pitch Jezebel over the wall, but wipe off their 
gold spectacles, and put on their best kid gloves, and 
unroll their morocco-covered sermon, and look bashful 
when they begin to speak about the sins of our day, as 
though it were a shame even to mention them. The 
hypocrites I They are afraid of the libertines and the 
men who drink too much, in their churches, and those 
who grind the face of the poor. Better, I say, clear out 
all our audiences from pulpit to storm-door, until no one 
is left but the sexton, and he staying merely to lock up, 
than to have the pulpit afraid of the pew. The time has 
come when the living Judases and Herods and Jezebels 
are to be arraigned. There is one thing I like about a 
big church: a dozen people may get mad about the truth 
and go off, and you don't know they are gone until about 
the next year. The cities standing on the ground are 
the cities to be reformed, and not the Herculaneums 
buried under volcanic ashes, or the cities of the plain 
fifty feet under the Dead Sea. 

I unroll the scroll of new revelations. With city mis- 
sionary, and the police of New York and Brooklyn, I 
have seen some things that I have not yet stated in this 
series of discourses on th6 night side of city life. The 
mght of which I speak now is darker than any other. 
No glittering chandelier, no blazing mirror adorns it. It 
is the long, deep exhaustive night of city pauperism, 
"We won't want a carriage to-night," said the detectives. 
"A carriage would hinder us in our work; a carriage 
going through the streets where we are going would only 
bring out the people to see what was the matter." So on 
^bot we went up the dark lanes of poverty Everything 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



85 



revolting to eye, and ear, and nostril. Population un- 
washed, uncombed. Rooms unventilated. Three mid- 
nights overlapping each other — midnight of the natural 
world, midnigjit of crime, midnight of pauperism. Stairs 
oozing with filth. The inmates, nine-tenths of the jour- 
ney to their fin^l doom, traveled. They started in some 
unhappy home pf the city or of the country. They 
plunged into the shambles of death within ten minutes' 
walk of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, and then 
came on gradually down until they have arrived at the 
Fourth Ward. When they move out of the Fourth 
Ward they will move into Bellevue Hospital; when they 
move out of Bellevue Hospital they will move to Black- 
welPs Island; when they move from BlackwelPs Island 
they will move to the Potter's Field; when they move 
from the Potter's Field they will move into belli Belle- 
vue Hospital and BlackwelPs Island take care of 18,000 
patients in one year. As we passed on, the rain pattering 
on the street and dripping around the doorways • made 
the night more dismal. I said, " Now Jet the policy go 
ahead," and they flashed their light, and there were four- 
teen persons trying to sleep, or sleeping, in one room*' 
Some on a bundle of straw; more with nothing under 
them and nothing over them. "Oh!" you say, "this is 
exceptional." It is not. Thousands lodge in that way. 
One hundred and seventy thousand families living in 
tenement houses, in more or less inconvenience, more or 
less squalor. Half a million people in New York city — 
five hundred thousand people living in tenement-houses ; 
• multitudes of these people dying by inches. Of the 
twenty-four thousand that die yearly in New York four- 
teen thousand die in tenement-houses. No lungs that 
God ever made could for a long while stand the at- 
mosphere we breathed for a little while. In the Fourth 



86 



UNDEK THE POLICE LANTERN. 



Ward, 17,000 people within the space of thirty acres. 
You say, "Why not clear them out? Why not, as at 
Liverpool, where 20,000 of these people were cleared out 
of the city, and the city saved from a moral pestilence, 
and tlie people themselves from being victimized?" 
There will be no reformation for these cities until the 
tenement -house system is entirely broken up. The city 
authorities will have to buy farms, and will have to put 
these people on those farms, and compel them to work. 
By the strong arm of the law, by the police lantern con- 
joined with Christian charity, these places must be ex- 
posed and must be uprooted. Those places in London 
which have become historical for crowded populations — 
St. Giles, Whitechapel, Holborn, the Strand — have their 
match at last in the Sixth Ward, Eleventh Ward, Four- 
teenth Ward, Seventeenth Ward of l!Tew York. No 
purification for our cities until each family shall have 
something of the privacy and seclusion of a home circle. 
As long as they herd like beasts, they will be beasts. 

Hark! What,is that heavy thud on the wet pavement? 
Why, that is a drunkard who has fallen, his head striking 
against the street — striking very hard. The police try 
to lift him up. Ring the bell for the city ambulance. 
1^0. Only an outcast, only a tatterdemalion — a heap of 
sores and rags. But look again. Perhaps he has some 
marks of manhood on his face; perhaps he may have 
been made in the image of God; perhaps he has a soul 
which will live after the dripping heavens of this dismal 
night have been rolled together as a scroll; perhaps he 
may have been died for, by a king; perhaps he may yetl 
be a conqueror charioted in the splendors of heavenly 
welcome. But we must pass on. We cross the street, 
and, the rain beating in his face, lies a man entirely un- 
conscious. I wonder where he came from. I wonder if 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTEEN. 



87 



any one is waiting for him. I wonder if he was ever 
rocked in a Christian cradle. I wonder if that gashed 
and bloated forehead was ever kissed bv a fond mother's 
lips. I wonder if he is stranded for eternity. But we 
cannot stop. We passed on down, the air loaded with 
blasphemies and obscenities, until I heard something 
that astounded me more than all. I said, "What is 
that?" It was a loud, enthusiastic Christian song, rolling 
out on the stormy air. I went up to the window and 
looked in. There was a room filled with all sorts of 
people, some standing, some kneeling, some sitting, some 
singing, some praying, some shaking hands as if to give 
encouragement, some wringing their hands as though 
over a wasted life. What was this? Ohl it was Jerry 
McAuley's glorious Christian mission. There he stood, 
himself snatched from death, snatching others from death. 
That scene paid for all the nausea and fatigue of the mid- 
night exploration. Our tears fell with the rain — tears 
of sympathy for a good man's work; tears of gratitude 
to God that one lifeboat had been launched on that wild 
sea of sin and death ; tears of hope that there might be 
lifeboats enough to take off all the wrecked, and, that, 
after a while, the Church of God, rousing from its fas- 
tidiousness, might lay hold with both hands of this 
work, which must be done if our cities are not to go 
down in darkness and fire and blood. 

This cluster of cities have more difficulty than any 
other cities in all the land. You must understand that 
within the last twenty-eight years five millions of for- 
eign population have arrived at our port. The most of 
those who had capital and means passed on to the greater 
openings at the West. Many however, stayed and have be- 
come our best citizens, and best members of our churches; 
but we know also that, tarrying within our borders, there 



S8 



UNDEB THB POLICB ULRTJSXS. 



has been a vast criminal population ready to be manipn- 
lated by the demagogue, ready to hatch out all kinds of 
criminal desperation. The vagrancy and the beggary 
of our cities, augmented by the very worst populations 
of London and Edinburg, and Glasgow, and Berlin, and 
Belfast, and Dublin and Cork. We had enough vaga- 
bondage, and enough turpitude in our American cities 
before this importation of sin was dumped at Castle 
Garden. OhI this pauperism, when will it ever be alle- 
viated? How much we saw! How much we could not 
seel How much none but the eye of Almighty God 
will ever seel Flash the lantern of the police around to 
that station-house. There they come up, the poor crea- 
tures, tipping their torn hats, saying, " Night's lodging, 
sir?" And then they are waived away into the dormi- 
tories. One hundred and forty thousand such lodgers 
in the city of ITew York every year. The atmosphere 
unbearable. What pathos in the fact that many families 
turned out of doors because they cannot pay their rent, 
come in here for shelter, and after struggling for decency, 
and struggling for a good name, are flung into this 
loathsome pool. The respectable and the reprobate. In- 
nocent childhood and vicious old age. The Lord's poor 
and Satan's desperadoes. There is no report of alms- 
house and missionary that will ever tell the story of Kew 
York and Brooklyn pauperism. It will take a larger 
book, a book with more ponderous lids, a book made of 
paper other than that of earthly manufacture. The book 
of God's remembrance! At my basement door we aver- 
age between fifty and one hundred calls every day for 
help. Beside that, in my reception room, from 7 o'clock 
in the morning until 10 o'clock at night, there is a con- 
tinuous procession of people applying for aid, making a 
demand which an old-fashioned silken purse, caught at 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



89 



the middle with a ring, the wealth of Yanderbilt in one 
end and the wealth of William B. Astor in the other end, 
could not satisfy. Of course, I speak of those men's 
wealth while they lived. We have more money now than 
they have since they have their shroud on. But even 
the shroud and the grave, we find, are to be contested for. 
Cursed be the midnight jackals of St. Mark's Church- 
yard I But I must go on with the fact that the story of 
Brooklyn and Kew York pauperism needs to be written 
in ink, black, blue and red — blue for the stripes, red for 
the blood, black for the infamy. In this cluster of cities 
20,000 people supported by the bureau for the outdoor 
sick; 20,000 people taken care of by the city hospitals; 
70,000 provided for by private charity ; 80,000 taken care 
of by reformatory institutions and prisons. Hear it, ye 
churches, and pour out your benefaction. Hear it, you 
ministers of religion, and utter words of sympathy for 
the suffering, and thunders of indignation against the 
cause of all this wretchedness. Hear it, mayoralties and 
judicial bench, and constabularies. Unless we wake up, 
the Lord will scourge us as the yellow fever never 
scourged New Orleans, as the plague never smote Lon- 
don, as the earthquake never shook Carraccas, as the fire 
never overwhelmed Sodom. I wish I could throw a bomb- 
shell of arousal into every city hall, meeting-house and 
cathedral on the continent. The factories at Fall Biver 
and at Lowell sometimes stop for lack of demand, and for 
lack of workmen, but this million-roomed factory of sin 
and death never stops, never slackens a band, never ar- 
rests a spindle. The great wheel of that factory keeps 
on turning, not by such floods as those of the Merrimac or 
the Connecticut, but crimson floods rushing forth from 
the groggeries, and the wine-cellars, and the drinking 
saloons of the land, and the faster the floods rush the 



V 



90 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



faster the wheel turns; and the band of that wheel is 
woven from broken heart-strings, and every time the 
wheel turns, from the mouth of the mill come forth 
blasted estates, squalor, vagrancy, crime, sin, woe — 
individual woe, municipal woe, national woe — and the 
creaking and the rumbling of the wheels are the shrieks 
and the groans of men and women lost for two worlds, 
and the cry is, "Bring on more fortunes,more homes, more 
States, more cities, to make up the awful grist of this stu- 
pendous mill." "Oh," you say, "the wretchedness and 
the sin of the city will go out from lack of material after 
awhile." "No, it will not. The police lantern flashes in 
another direction. Here come 15,000 shoeless, hatless, 
homeless children of the street, in this cluster of cities. 
They are the reserve corps of this great army of wretch- 
edness and crime that are dropping down into the Morgue, 
the East river, the Potter's Field, the prison. A phi- 
lanthropist has estimated that if these children were 
placed in a great procession, double-file, three feet apart, 
they would make a procession eleven miles long. Ohl 
what a pale, coughing, hunger-bitten, sin -cursed, opthal- 
mic throng — the tigers, the adders, the scorpions ready 
to bite and sting society, which they take to be their 
natural enemy. Howard Mission has saved many. Chil- 
dren- s Aid Society has saved many. Industrial Schools 
have saved many. One of these societies transported 
30,000 children from the streets of our cities, to farms 
at the West, by a stratagem of charity, turning them from 
vagrancy into useful citizenship, and out of 21,000 chil- 
dren thus transported from the cities to farms only 
twelve turned out badly. But still the reserve corps of 
sin and wretchedness marches on. There is the regi- 
ment of boot-blacks. They seem jolly, but they have 
more sorrow than many an old man has had. All kinds 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



91 



of temptation. Working on, making two or three dol- 
lars a week. At fifteen years of age sixty years old in 
sin. Pitching pennies at the street corners. Smoking 
fragments of castaway cigars. Tempted by the gamblers. 
Destroyed by the top gallery in the low play house 
Blacking shoes their regular business. Between times 
blackening their morals. "Shine your boots, sir?" they 
call out with merry voices, but there is a tremor in their 
accentuation. Who cares for them? You put your foot 
thoughtlessly on their stand, and you whistled or 
smoked, when God knows you might have given them 
one kind word. They never had one. Whoever prayed 
for a bootblack? Who, finding the wind blowiog under 
the short jacket, or reddening his bare neck, ever asked 
him to warm? Who, when he is wronged out of his ter 
cents, demands justice for him? God have mercy or 
the bootblacks. The newsboys, another regiment — the 
smartest boys in all the city. At work at four o'clock in 
the morning. At half-past three, by unnatural vigilance, 
awake themselves, or pulled at by rough hands. In the 
dawn of the day standing before the folding-rooms of 
the great newspapers, taking the wet, damp sheets over 
their arms, and against their chests already shivering 
with the cold. , Around the bleak ferries, and up and 
down the streets on the cold days, singing as merrily as 
though it were a Christmas carol; making half a cent 
on each paper, some of them working fourteen hours for 
fifty cents! Nine thousand of these newsboys applied 
for aid at the Newsboys' Lodging-house on Park place. 
New York, in one year. ' About one thousand of them 
laid up in the savings bank connected with that institu- 
tion, a little more than $3,000. But still this great 
army .marches on, hungry, cold, sick, toward an early 
grave, or a quick prison. I tell you there is nothing 



92 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



that SO moves my compassion as on a cold winter morn- 
ing to see one of these newsboys, a fourth clad, newspa- 
pers on his arm that he cannot seem to sell, face or hands 
bleeding from a fall, or rubbing his knee to relieve it 
from having been hit on the side of a car, as some *'gen- 
tleman," with furs around his neck and gauntlets lined 
with lamb's wool, shoved him off, saying: "You miser- 
able rat!" Yet hawking the papers through the streets, 
papers full of railroad accidents and factory explosions, 
and steamers foundering at sea in the last storm, yet say- 
ing nothing, and that which is to him worse than all the 
other calamities and all the other disasters, the calamity 
that he was ever born at all. Flash the police lantern 
around, and let us see these poor lads cuddled up under 
the stairway. Look at them! Now for a little while 
they are unconscious of all their pains and aches, and of 
the storm and darkness, once in awhile struggling in 
their dreams as though some one were trying to take tho 
papers away from them. Standing there I wondered if 
it would be right to wish that they might never wake up. 
God pity them! There are other regiments in this 
reserve corps — regiments of rag-pickers, regiments of 
match-sellers, regiments of juvenile vagrants. Oh! if 
these lads are not saved, what is to become of our cities? 

But I said to the detective, "I have had enough of this 
to-night; let us go." But by that time I had lost the 
points of the compass, for we had gone down stairways 
and up stairways, and wandered down through this street 
and that street, and all I knew was that I was bounded 
on the north by want, and on the south by squalor, and 
on the east by crime, and on the west by despair. Tlie 
fact was that everything had opened before us; for these 
detectives pretended to be searching for a thief, and they 
took me along as the man who had lost the property! 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTERN. 



93 



The stratagem was theirs, not mine. But I thought 
coming home that rainy night, I wished I could make 
pass before my congregation, as in a panorama, all that 
scene of suffering, that I might stir their pity and arouse 
their beneficence, and make them the everlasting friends 
of city evangelization. '*Why," you say, "I had no 
idea things were so bad. Why, I get in my carriage at 
Forty-fifth street and I ride clear down to my banking- 
house in Wall street, and I don't see anything." No, 
you do not want to see! The King and the Parliament 
of England did not know that there were thirty-six bar- 
rels of gunpowder rolled into the vaults under the Par- 
liament House. They did not know Guy Fawkes had 
his touchwood and matches all ready — ready to dash the 
Government of England into atoms. The conspiracy 
was revealed, however. I tell you I have explored the 
vaults of city life, and I am here this morning to tell 
you that there are deathful and explosive influences under 
all our cities, ready to destroy us with a great moral con- 
vulsion. Some men say: "I don't see anything of this, 
and I am not interested in it." You ought to be. You 
remind me of a man who has been ship^* -ecked with a 
thousand others. He happens to get up on the shore, 
and the others are all down in the surf. He goes up in 
a fisherman's cabin, and sits down to warm himself. The 
fisherman says: "Ohl this won't do. Come out and 
help me to get these others out of the surf." "Oh, no I" 
says the man; *'it's my business now to warm myself." 
"But," says the fisherman, "these men are dying; are 
you not going to give them help?" "Oh, no I Pve got 
ashore myself, and I must warm myself!" That is what 
people are d-^^ ig in the church to-day. A great multi- 
tude are out in the surf of sin and death, going down 
forever; but men sit by the fire of the church, warming 



94 



unIjer the police lantebn. 



their Christian graces, warming their faith, warming 
their hope for heaven, and I say, "Gome out, and work 
to-day for Christ." "Oh, no," they say; "my sublime 
duty is to warm myselfl" Such men as that will not 
come within ten thousand miles of heaven 1 Help for- 
eign missions. Those of my own blood are toiling in 
foreign lands with Christ's Word. Send a million dol- 
lars for the salvation of the heathen — that is right — but 
look after the heathen also around the mouths of the 
Hudson and East rivers. Send missionaries if you will 
to Borioboola-gha, but send missionaries also through 
Houston street, Mercer street, Greene street, Navy street, 
Fulton street, and all around about Brooklyn Atlantic 
Docks. If you will, send quilted coverlets to Central 
Africa to keep the natives warm in summer-time, and 
send ice-cream freezers to Greenland, but do have a little 
common sense and practical charity, and help these cities 
here that want hats, want clothes, want shoes, want fire, 
want medicines, want instruction, want the Gospel, want 
Christ. 

I must adjourn to another Sabbath morning much of 
what I have ,y say in regard to this city midnight ex- 
ploration, and also the proposing of remedies; for I am 
not the man to stand here Sabbath by Sabbath talking of 
ills when I have no panacea. There is an almighty res- 
cue for the city, and in due time I will speak of these 
things. 

You have seen often a magic lantern. You have seen 
the room darkened, and then the magic lantern throwing 
a picture on the canvas. Well, this morning I wish I 
could darken these three great emblazoned windows, and 
have all the doors darkened, and then I could bring out 
two magic lanterns — the magic lantern of the home, and 
the magic lantern of the police. Here is the magic kn- 



/ 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTEKN. 



95 



tern of the home. Look now upon the canvas. Mother 
putting the little children to bed, trying to hush the 
frisky and giggling group for thq evening prayer ; their 
foreheads against the counterpane, they are trying to 
say their evening prayer; their tongue is so crooked 
that none but God and the mother can understand it. 
Then the children are lifted into bed, and they are cov- 
ered up to the chin. Then the mother gives them a warm 
good-night kiss, and leaves them to the guardian angels 
that spread wings of canopy over the trundle-bed. Mid- 
night lantern of the police. Look now on the canvas. 
A boy kenneled for the night underneath the stairway 
in a hall through which the wind sweeps, or lying on the 
cold ground. He had no parentage. He was pitched 
into the world by a merciless incognito. He dees not 
go to bed ; he has no bed. His cold fingers thrust through 
his matted hair his only pillow. He did not sup last 
night; he will not breakfast to-morrow. An outcast; a 
ragamuffin. He did not say his prayers when he retired ; 
he knows no prayer; he never heard the name of God or 
Christ, except as something to swear by. The wings 
over him, not the wings of angels, but the dark, bat-like 
wings of penury and want. Magic lantern of the home. 
Look now on the canvas. Family gathered around the 
argand burner. Father, feet on ottoman, mother sewing 
a picturesque pattern. Two children pretending to study, 
but chiefly watching other children who are in unre- 
strained romp, so many balls of fun and frolic in full 
bounce from room to room. Background of pictures 
and upholstery and musical instrument, from which jew- 
eled fingers sweep "Home, Sweet Home." Magic lantern 
of the police. Look now on the canvas. A group in^ 
toxicated and wrangling, cursing God, cursing each 
other; the past all shame, the future all suffering. Chil- 
dren fleeing from the missile flung by a father's hand. 



96 



UNDER THE POLICE LANTEBN. 



Fragments of a chair propped against the wall. Frag- 
ments of a pitcher standing on the mantle. A pile of 
refuse food brought in from some kitchen, torn by the 
human swine plunging into the trough. Magic lantern 
of the home. Look now upon the canvas. A Christian 
daughter has just died. Carriages rolling up to the 
door in sympathy. Flowers in crowns and anchors and 
harps covering the beautiful casket, the silver plate 
marked, *^aged 18." Funeral services intoned amid the 
richly-shawled and gold-braceleted. Long procession 
going out this way to unparalleled Greenwood to the 
beautiful family plot where the sculptor will raise the 
monument of burnished Aberdeen with the inscription, 
'*She is not dead, but sleepeth." Oh I blessed is that home 
which has a consecrated Christian daughter, whether on 
earth or in heaven. Magic lantern of the police. Look 
now on the canvas. A poor waif of the street has just 
expired. Did she have any doctor? "No. Did she have 
any medicine? Xo. Did she have any hands to close 
her eyes and fold her arms in death? No. Are there 
no garments in the house fit to wrap her in for the tomb? 
None. Those worn-out shoes will not do for these feel 
in their last journey. Where are all the good Christians ? 
Oh! some of them are rocking-chaired, in morning 
gowns, in tears over Bulwer Lytton's account of the last 
days of Pompeii; they are so sorry for that girl that got 
petrified I Others of the Christians are in church, kneel- 
ing on a soft rug, praying for the forlorn Hottentots! 
Come, call in the Coroner — call in the Charity Commis- 
sioner. The carpenter unrolls the measuring- tape, and 
decides she will need a box five and a half feet long. 
Two men lift her into the box, lift the box into the 
wagon, and it starts for the Potter's Field. The excavation 
is not large enough for the box, and the men are in a 



UNDER THE POLICE LAN»rEBN. 



97 



hurry, and one of them gets on the lid and cranches it 
down to its place in the ground. Stop I Wait for the 
city missionary until he can come and read a chapter, or 
say, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." "ITo," say the men 
of the spade, "we have three or four more cases just 
like this to bury before night." "Well," I say, "how, 
then, is the grave to be filled npl" Christ suggests a 
way. Perhaps it had better be filled up with stones. 
"Let those who are without sin oome and cast a stone at 
her," until the excavation is filled. Then the wagon 
rolls off, and I see a form coming slowly across the Pot- 
ter's Field. He walks very slowly, as his feet hurt. 
He comes to that grave, and there he stands all day and 
all night, and I come out and I accost him, and I say^ 
"Who art thou?" And, he says, "I am the Christ of 
Mary Magdalen!" And then I thought that perhaps 
there might have been a dying prayer, and that there 
might have been penitential tears, and around that mis- 
erable spot at the last there may be more resurrection 
pomp than when Queen Elizabeth gets out of her mauso- 
leum in*Westminster Abbey, 
But I must close the two lanterns. 
7 



98 



SATANIC AGITATIO». 



CHAPTEE VI. 

SATANIC AGITATION. 

** The devil Is come down unto you, having great wrath, because 
he knoweth he hath but a short time." — Revelation xii: 12. 

Somehow the enemy of all good has found out what 
will be the hour of his dismissal from this world. He 
cried out to Christ: "Hast thou come to torment us 
before the time?'* It is a healthful symptom that Satan 
is so active now in all our cities. It is the indication 
that he is going out of business. From the way that he 
flies around, he is practically saying: Give me 500,000 
souls; give me New York and Brooklyn; give me Boston 
and Philadelphia and Cincinnati; give me all the cities, 
and give them to me quickly, or I will never ^et them 
at all." That Satan is in paroxysm of excitement is cer- 
tain. His establishments are nearly bankrupted. That 
the powers of darkness are nervous, knowing their time 
is short, is evident from the fact that, if a man stand in a 
pulpit speaking against the great iniquities of the day, 
they all begin to flutter. 

A few nights ago, riding up Broadway, I asked the 
driver to stop at a street-lamp that I might better 
examine my memorandum (it happened to be in front of 
a place of amusement), when a man rushed out with 
great alarm and excitement, and said to the driver, ^^Is 
that Talraage you have inside there?" Men write me 
with commercial handwriting, protesting, evidently be- 



6ATANIC AGITATION. 99 

cause tliej fear that sometimes in their midnight carousal 
they may meet a Christian reformer and explorer. 1 had 
thought to preach three or four sermons on the night 
side of city life ; but now that I find that all the powers 
of darkness are so agitated and alarmed and terrorized, I 
plant the battery for new assault upon the castles of sin, 
and shall go on from Sabbath morning to Sabbath morn- 
ing, saying all I have to say, winding up this subject by 
several sermons on the glorious daybreak of Christian 
reform and charity which have made this cluster of cities 
the best place on earth to live in. Meanwhile, under- 
stand that whatever Satanic excitement may be abroad 
is only in fulfillment of the words of my text: "The 
devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, be- 
cause he knoweththat he hath but a short time." 

A few nights ago, passing over from Brooklyn by 
South Ferry, our great metropolis looked like a mountain 
of picturesqueness and beauty. There were enough stars 
scattered over the heavens to suggest the street-lamps 
of that city which hath no need of the sun. The masts 
of the shipping against the sky broiiglit to us the cos- 
mopolitan feeling, and I said, "All the world is here." 
The spires of St. Paul's, and St. George's, and of Trinity 
pointed up through the starlight toward the only rescue 
for the dying populations of our great cities. Long rows 
of lamps skirted the city with fire. More than ten thous- 
and gaslights, united with those kindled in towers and 
in the top stories of establishments which ply great in- 
dustries in perpetual motion, threw on the sky from 
horizon to horizon the radiance of a vast illumination. 
Landing on New York side, the first thing that confront- 
ed us was the greatest nuisance and the grandest relief 
which New York has experienced in the last thirty years, 
the elevated railway, which, while it has commercial 



100 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



significance, has more moral meaning. Euin and death 
to the streets through which it runs, it is the means of 
moral salvation to the crowded and smothered tenement - 
houses, which have been slaying their thousands year by 
year. Was there ever such a disfigurement and sacrifi- 
cation of carpentry and engineering that wrought such 
a blissful result? The great obstacle to New York morals 
is the shape of the island. More than nine miles long, 
in some places it is only a mile and a half wide. While 
this immense water frontage of twenty miles is grand 
for commerce, it gives crowded residence to the popula- 
tion, unless, by some rapid mode of transit, they can be 
whirled to distant homes at night, and whirled back 
again in the morning. These people must be near their 
work. Some of them do not like ferriage. Many of 
them are afraid of water. From the looks of some of 
their hands and faces, you find it proved that they are 
afraid of water. Hence they are huddled together in 
tenement-houses, which are the destruction of all health, 
all modesty, and the highest style of morals. For the 
last thirty years New York has been crowded to death. 
Hence, when on the night of our exploration we saw the 
rail-train flying through the air, I said to myself, *'This 
is the first practical alleviation of the tenement-house 
system." People of small means will have an oppor- 
tunity of getting to the better air and the better morals 
and the better accomodations of the country. But let 
not this style of improvement be made at the expense of 
those whose property is destroyed by the clatter and bang 
and wheeze of mid-air locomotive. Let cities, like indi- 
viduals, pay for damages wrought, and for horses fright- 
ened out of their harness, and for carriages smashed 
against the curbstone. New York and Brooklyn and all 
our great cities need what London has already gained — 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



101 



underground railroads which shall, without hindrance 
and without danger and without nuisance, put down our 
great populations just where they want to be, morning 
and night. 

Passing up through the city, on the left was Castle 
Garden, now comparatively unattractive ; but as we went 
past, my boyhood memory brought back to me the time 
when all that region was crowded with the finest equi- 
pages of New York and Brooklyn, and Castle Garden 
was thronged with a great multitude, many of whom 
had paid $14 for a seat to hear Jenny Lind sing. While 
God might make a hundred such artists in a year. He 
makes only one for a century. He who heard her sing 
would have no right to complain if he never heard any 
more music until he heard the doxology of the one hun- 
dred and forty and four thousand. There was the music 
of two worlds in her voice. While surrounded by those 
who almost deified her, she wrote in a private album a 
verse which it may not be wrong to quote : 

In vaiu I seek for rest 

In all created good; 
It leaves me still unblest 

And makes me cry for God. 
And sure at rest I cannot be 
Until my heart finds rest in Thee. 

That was the secret of her music, and never, either 
day or night, do I pass Castle Garden, but I think of 
the Swedish cantatrice and the excited and vociferating 
assemblage, the majority of whom have joined the larger 
assemblages of the next world. 

Passing on up into New York, we left on the right 
hand, the once fashionable Bowling Green, around which 
the wealth of New York congregated — the once elegant 
drawing-rooms, now occupied by steamship companies, 



102 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



where passengers get booked for Glasgow and Liverpool ; 
the inhabitants of those once elegant drawing-rooms long 
ago booked for a longer voyage. Passing on up, we 
heard only the clatter of the horses' hoofs until we came 
to the head of Wall street, and by the two rows of gas- 
lights, saw that on all that street there was not a foot 
stirring. And yet there seemed to come up on the night 
air the cachinnation of those on whose hands the stocks 
had gone up, and the sighing of jobbers on whose hands 
the stocks had gone down. The street, only half a mile 
long, and yet the avenue of fabulous accumulation, and 
appalling bankruptcy, and wild swindle, and suicide, and 
catastrophe, and death ! While the sough of the wind 
came up from Wall street toward old Trinity, it seemed 
to say: "Where is Ketcham? Where is Swartwout? 
Where is Gay? Where is Fisk? Where is Cornelius 
Vanderbilt? Where is the Black Friday ?" Then the 
tower of Trinity tolled nine times — three for the bank- 
rupted, three for the suicided, three for the dead ! 
''Hurry up, George," I said, "and get past this place;" 
for though I do not believe in ghosts, I wanted to get 
past that forsaken and all-suggestive night-scene of Wall 
street. Under the flickering gaslight one of active im- 
agination might almost imagine he saw the ghosts of 
ten thousand fortunes dead and damned. Hastening on 
up a few blocks, we came where, on the right side, we 
saw large establishments ablaze from foundation to cap-' 
stone. These were the great printing-houses of the New 
York dailies. We got out. We went in. We went up 
from editorial rooms to type-setters' and proof-readers' 
loft. These are the foundries where the great thunder- 
bolts of public opinion are forged. How the pens 
scratched ! How the types clicked ! How the scissors 
cut ! How the wheels rushed, all the world's news roil- 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



103 



ing over the cylinder like Niagara at Table Kock. Great 
torrents of opinion, of crimes, of accidents, of destroyed 
reputations, of avenged character. Who can estimate 
the mightiness for good or evil of a daily newspaper? 
Fingers of steel picking off the end of telegraphic wire, 
facts of religion, and philosophy and science, and infor- 
mation from the four winds of heaven ! In 1860 the 
Associated Press began to pay $200,000 a year for news. 
Some of the individual sheets paying $50,000 extra for 
dispatches. Some of them, independent of the Asso- 
ciated Press, with a wire rake gathering up sheaves of 
news from all the great harvest fields of the world. It 
is high time that good men understood that the print- 
ing press is the mightiest engine of all the centuries. 
The high-water mark of the printer's type-case shows the 
ebb or flow of the great oceanic tides of civilization or 
Christianity. Just think of it! In 1835 all the daily 
newspapers of New York issued but 10,000 copies. Now 
there are 500,000, and taking the ordinary calculation 
that five people read a newspaper, two million, five hun- 
dred thousand people reading the daily newspapers of 
New York ! I once could not understand how the Bible 
statement could be true when it says that "nations shall 
be born in a day." I can understand it now. Get the 
telegraph operators and the editors converted, and in 
twenty-four hours the whole earth will hear the salvation 
call. Nothing more impressed me in the night explora- 
tion than the power of the press. But it is carried on with 
oh ! what aching eyes, and what exhaustion of health. 
I did not find more than one man out of ten who had 
anything like brawny health in the great newspaper 
establishments of New York. The malodor of the ink, 
however complete the ventilation ; the necessity of toiling 
at hours when God has drawn the curtain of the night 



104 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



for natural sleep ; the pressure of daily publication what- 
ever breaks down; the temptation to intoxicating stim- 
ulants in order to keep the nervous energy up, a tempta- 
tion which only the strongest can resist — all these make 
newspaper life something to be sympathized with. Do 
not begrudge the three or five cents you give for the 
newspaper. You buy not only intelligence with that, 
but you help pay for sleepless nights, and smarting eye- 
balls, and racked brain, and early sepulchre. 

Coming out of these establishments, my mind full of 
the bewildering activities of the place, I stopped on the 
street and I said, "Now drive up Broadway, and turn 
down Chambers street to the left, and let us see what 
New York will be twenty years from now. " The proba- 
bility is that those who are criminal will stay criminal ; 
the vast majority of those who are libertines will remain 
libertines ; the vast majority of those who are thieves 
will stay thieves ; the vast majority of those who are 
drunkards will stay drunkards. "What," say you, "no 
hope for the cities?" Ah ! my heart was never so full 
of high and exhilarant hope as now. We turned down 
Chambers street until we came to the sign "Newsboys' 
Lodging-house," and we went in. Now, if there is 
anything I like it is boys. Not those brought up by 
registers, with the house heated by furnaces, and lads 
manipulated by some over-indulgent aunt, until their 
hair has bean curled until they have got to be girls ; but 
I mean genuine boys, such as God makes, with extra 
romp and hilarity, so that after they have been pounded 
by the world they shall have some exuberance left. Boys, 
genuine boys, who cannot keep quiet five minutes. Boys 
who can skate, and swim, and rove, and fly kites, and 
strike balls, and defend sickly playmates when they are 
imposed on, and get hungry in half an hour after they 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



105 



have dined, and who keep things stirred up and lively. 
Matthew Arnold's boys. 

We entered the Newsboys' Lodging-house, and there 
we found them. I knew theni right away, and they 
knew me, by a sort of instinct of friendliness. Their 
coats off ; for, although outside it was biting cold, inside 
the room Christian charity had flooded everything with 
glorious summer. Over the doorway were written the 
words: ''No boys that . have homes can stop here.'^ 
"What," I said, "can it be possible that all these bright 
and happy lads have been swept up from the street?" 
First, they are plunged into the bath, and then they pass 
under the manipulations of the barber, and then they are 
taken to the wardrobe, and in the name of Him who 
said, ''I was naked and ye clothed me," they are arrayed 
in appropriate attire, each one paying, if he can, so there 
shall be no sense of pauperism ; some of them paying 
one penny for all the privileges of a bountiful table, and 
the most extravagant paying only six cents. Gymna- 
sium to ^straighten and invigorate the pinched bodies. 
Books for the mind. Eeligion for the soul. I said, 
"Can these boys sing?" and the answer came back in an 
anthem that shook the room : 

Eing the bells of heaven, 
For there's joy to-day. 

I said, "What is this long, broad box with so many 
numbers nailed by a great many openings?" "Oh," 
they said, "this is the savings bank; the boys put their 
money here, and each one has a bank-book, and he gets 
his money at the beginning of the month. " Meanwhile, 
if under urgency for a new io-p, or attractive confection- 
ery, or any one of those undefinable things which crowd 
a boy's pockets, he wants money, he cannot get it. He 
must wait until the first of the month, and so thrift and 



106 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



economy are cultivated. I know statistics are generally 
very dry, but here is a statistic which has in it as much 
spirit as anything that Thackeray ever wrote, and as 
much sublimity as anything John Milton ever wrote : 
One hundred and forty-three thousand boys have been 
assembled in these newsboys' lodging-houses since the 
establishment of the institution ; twelve thousand have 
been returned to friends, and fifteen thousand have 
deposited in this great box over $42,000 ; while many 
of the lads have been prepared for usefulness, becoming 
farmers, mechanics, merchants, bankers, clergymen, law- 
yers, doctors, judges of courts Qven, and many of them 
prepared for heaven, where some have already entered, 
confronting, personally, that Christ in whose compassion 
the institution was established. And this society all the 
time transporting the lads to Western farms. No 
reformation for them while they stay in the dens of New 
York. What must be the sensation of a lad who has 
lived all his days in Elm street, or Water street, when 
he wakes up on the Iowa prairie, with one hundred miles 
room on all sides ? One of these lads, getting out West, 
wrote a letter, descriptive of the place, and urging others 
to come. He said: 

"I am getting along first rate. I am on probation in tlie Meth- 
odist Churcli. I will be entered as a member tlie first of next 
month. I now teach a Sunday-school class of eleven boys. I get 
along first rate with it. This is a splendid country to make a 
living in. If the boys running around the street with a blacking- 
box on their shoulder or a bundle of papers under their arms only 
knew what high^old times we boys have out here, they wouldn't 
hesitate about coming West, but come the first chance they got." 

And to show the brightness of some of these lads, one 
of them made a little speech to his comrades just as he 
was about to start West, saying to his friends whom he 
was about to leave : 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



107 



*'Boys and gentlemen, perhaps you would like to hear sum'at 
about the West, the great West, you know, where so many of our 
old friends are settled down and going to be great men; some of 
the greatest men in the great Republic. Boys, that's the place for 
growing Congressmen, and Governors, and Presidents. Do you 
want to be newsboys always, and shoeblacks, and timber mer- 
chants in a small way, by selling matches? If you do, you will 
stay in New York; but if you don't, you will go out West and begin 
to be farmers; for the beginning of a farmer, my boys, is the mak- 
ing of a Congressman and a President. If you want to be loafers 
all your days, you will hang up your caps, and play around the 
groceries, and join fire engine and truck companies; but if you 
want to be the man who will make his mark in the country, you 
will get up steam and go ahead. There is lots of the prairies wait- 
ing for you. You havn't any idfea of what you may be yet, if you 
will take a bit of my advice. How do you know but if you are 
honest and good and industrious, you may get so much up in the 
ranks that you will not have a general or a judge your boss? You 
will be lifted on horseback when you go to take a ride on the prai- 
ries, and if you choose to go in a wagon, or on an excursion, you 
will find that the hard times don't touch you there, and the best 
of all will be that if it is good to-day it will be better to-morrow." 

Is not a lad like that worth saving ? There are thou- 
sands of them in New York. God have mercy on 
them ! 

As I came down off the steps of that benevolent insti- 
tution, I said, "Surely, the evils of our cities are not more 
wonderful than their charities." Then I started out 
through New Bowery, and I came to the sign of the 
Howard Mission, famous on earth and in heaven for the 
fact that through it so many Christian merchants and 
bankers, and philanthropists have saved multitudes of 
boys and girls from eternal calamity. Last summer 
that institution, taking some children one or two hun- 
dred miles into the country to be taken care of gratui- 
tously for two or three weeks on farms, the train stopped 
at the depot, and one lad, who had never seen a green 
field, rushed out and gathered up the grass and the 



108 SATANIC AGITATION. 

flowers, and came back and then took out a penny, his 
entire fortune, and handed it to the overseer, and said, 
"Here, take that penny and bring out more boys to see 
the flowers and the country. " Seated on the platform 
of the Howard Mission that night, looking off upon these 
rescued children, I said within myself, "Who can esti- 
mate the reward for both worlds to these people who put 
their energies in such a Christ-like undertaking?" What 
a monument for Joseph Hoxie and Mr. Van Meter, the 
counselors of the institution in the past, and for A. S. 
Hatch and H. E. Tompkins, its advisers at the present, 
and thousands of people who in giving food through 
that institution have fed Christ, and in donating gar- 
ments have clothed Christ, and in sheltering the wan- 
dering have housed Christ ! God will pursue such men 
and women with His mercy to the edge of the pillow on 
which they die, and then, on the other side of the gate, 
He will give them a reception that will make all heaven 
echo and re-echo with their deeds. But oh ! how much 
work — herculean, yea, omnipotent work— before all this 
vagrancy is ended ! It is an authentic statistic that in 
this cluster of cities there are eighty thousand people 
over ten years of age who cannot write their names. 
Then what must be the ignorance of the multitudes 
under that age ? 

But I said to the driver, "We must hasten out on 
Broadway, for it is just the time when all the righteous 
and unrighteous places of amusement will be disband- 
ing, and we shall see the people going up and down the 
streets. Coming from all sides, these are the great tides 
of life and death. The last orchestra had played. The 
curtain had dropped at the end of the play. The 
audiences of the concerts in the churches and the acade- 
mies had all dispersed, moving up and down the street. 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



109 



Good amusements are very good. Bad amusements are 
very bad. He who paints a fine picture, or who sculp- 
tures a beautiful statue, or sings a healthful song, or 
rouses an innocent laugh, or in any way cuts the strap of 
the burden of care on the world's shoulders, is a bene- 
factor, and in the name of God I bless him ; but between 
Canal' street and Fourteenth street there are enough 
places of iniquitous amusement to keep all the world of 
darkness in perpetual holiday. In fifteen minutes, on 
any street almost of our city, you may find enough vicious 
amusement to invoke all the sulphur and brimstone 
that overwhelmed Sodom. The more than three hun- 
dred miles of Croton water pipes underlying New York 
city, emptied on these polluted places, could not wash 
them clean ! You see the people coming out flushed 
with the strychnine wine taken in the recesses of the 
programme — some of the people in companionship that 
insures their present and eternal discomfiture, turning 
off from Broadway on the narrow streets running off 
either side ! The recording angel shivered with horror 
as he penned their destiny. 

Looking out of the carriage, I saw a tragedy on the 
corner of Broadway and Houston streets. A young man, 
evidently doubting as to which direction he had better 
take, his hat lifted high enough so you could see he had 
an intelligent forehead, stout chest ; he had a robust 
development. Splendid young man. Cultured young man. 
Honored young man. Why did he stop there while 
so many were going up and down ? The fact is, that 
every man has a good angel and a bad angel contending 
for the mastery of his spirit, and there was a good angel 
and a bad angel struggling with that young man's soul 
< at the corner of Broadwav and Houston streets. "Come 
with me,'* said the good angel; "I will take you home; 



110 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



I will Spread my wing over your pillow ; I will lovingly 
escort you all through life under supernatural protection ; 
I will bless every cup you drink out of, every couch you 
rest on, every doorway you enter ; I will consecrate your 
tears when you weep, your sweat when you toil, and at 
the last I will hand over your grave into the hand of the 
bright angel of a Christian resurrection. In answer to 
your father's petition and your mother's prayer, I have 
been sent of the Lord out of heaven to be your guardian 
spirit. Come with me," said the good angel in a voice 
of unearthly symphony. It was music like that which 
drops from a lute of heaven when a seraph breathes on 
it. "No, no," said the bad angel, "come with me; I 
have something better to offer ; the wines I pour are from 
chalices of bewitching carousal ; the dance I lead is over 
floor tessellated with unrestrained indulgencies ; there is 
no God to frown on the temples of sin where I worship. 
The skies are Italian. The paths I tread are through 
meadows, daisied and primrosed. Come with me." The 
young man hesitated at a time when hesitation was ruin, 
and the bad angel smote the good angel until it departed, 
spreading wings through the starlight upward and away 
until a door flashed open in the sky and forever the wings 
vanished. That was the turning point in that young 
man's history ; for, the good angel flown, he hesitated no 
longer, but started on a pathway which is beautiful at 
the opening, but blasted at the last. The bad angel, 
leading the way, opened gate after gate, and at each gate 
the road became rougher and the sky more lurid, and 
what was peculiar, as the gate slammed shut it came to 
with a jar that indicated that it would never open. Passed 
each portal, there was a grinding of locks and a shoving 
of bolts ; and the scenery on either side the road changed 
from gardens to deserts, and the June air became a cut- 
ting December blast, and the bright wings of the bad 



SATANIC AGITATION. 



Ill 



angel turned to sackcloth, and the eyes of light became 
hollow with hopeless grief, and the fountains, that at the 
start had tossed with wine, poured forth bubbling tears 
and foaming blood, and on the right side the road there 
was a serpent, and the man said to the bad angel, "What 
is that serpent?" and the answer was, "That is the ser- 
pent of stinging remorse." On the left side the road 
there was a lion, and the man asked the bad angel, 
"What is that lion?" and the answer was, "That is the 
lion of all-devouring despair." A vulture flew through 
the sky, and the man asked the bad angel, "What is that 
vulture?" and the answer was, "That is the vulture 
waiting for the carcasses of the slain." And then the 
man began to try to pull ojff of him the folds of some- 
thing that had wound him round and round, and he said 
^to the bad angel, "What is it that twists me in this awful 
convolution?" and the answer was, "That is the worm 
that never dies !" And then the man said to the bad 
angel, "What does all this mean? I trusted in what you 
said at the corner of Broadway and Houston streets ; I 
trusted it all, and why have you thus deceived me?" 
Then the last deception fell off the charmer, and it said, 
"I was sent forth from the pit to destroy your soul; I 
watched my chance for many a long year ; when you 
hesitated that night on Broadway I gained my triumph ; 
now you are here. Ha ! ha ! You are here. Come, now, 
let us fill these two chalices of fire, and drink together 
to darkness and woe and death. Hail ! Hail ! " Oh ! 
young man, will the good angel sent forth by Christ, or 
the bad angel sent forth by sin, get the victory over 
your soul ? Their wings are interlocked this moment 
above you, contending for your destiny, as above the 
Apennines, eagle and condor fight mid-sky. This 
hour may decide your destiny. God help you. To 
hesitate is to die ! 



lis 



AMosra THUTBS AND AsaAjasiinL 



CHAPTER VIL 

AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell 
among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him^ 
and departed, leaving him half dead. — St. Luke z* 80. 

This attack of highwaymen was in a rocky ravine, 
which gives to robbers a first-rate chance. So late as 
1820, on that very road, an English traveler was shot 
and robbed. This wayfarer of the text not only lost his 
money and his apparel, but nearly lost his life. His 
assailants were not only thieves, but assassins. The 
scene of this lonely road from Jerusalem to Jericho is 
repeated every night in our great cities — men falling 
among thieves, getting wounded, and left half dead. In 
this series of Sabbath morning discourses on the 
night side of city life, as I have recently explored iti 
I have spoken to you of the night of pauperism, the 
night of debauchery and shame, the night of official 
neglect and bribery, and now I come to speak t6 
you of the night of theft, the night of burglary, the 
night of assassination, the night of pistol and dirk 
and bludgeon. You say, what can there be in such a 
subject for me? Then you remind me of the man who 
asked Christ the question, "Who is my neighbor?" and 
in the reply of the text, Christ is setting forth the idea 
that wherever there is a man in trouble, there is your 
neighbor; and before I get through this morning, if the 
Lord will help me, I will show you that you have some 
rery dangeroas nei'^bbors, and I will show you also what 



AMONG THIEYE8 AND ASSASSINS. 



118 



is your moral responsibility before God in regard to 
them. 

I said to the chief official, "Give me two stout detec- 
tives for this night's work — men who are not only mus- 
cular, but who look muscular." I said to these detec- 
tives before we started on our midnight exploration, 
**Have you loaded pistols?" and they brought forth 
their firearms and their clubs, showing that they were 
ready for anything. Then I said, "Show me crime; 
show me crime in the worst shape, the most villainous 
tnd outrageous crime. In other words show me the 
worst classes of people to be saved by the power of 
Christ's gospel." I took with me only two officers of 
the law, for I want no one to run any risk in my behalf, 
and, having undertaken to show up the lowest depths of 
Bociety, I felt I must go on until I had completed the 
work. One of the officers proposed to me that I take a 
disguise lest I be assailed. I said, " No; I am going on 
a mission of Christian work, and I am going to take the 
riska, and I shall go as I am." And so I went. You say to 
me, **Why didn't you first look after the criminal classes 
in Brooklyn?" I answer, it was not for any lack of mate- 
rial. Last year, in the city of Brooklyn, there were 
nearly 27,000 arrests for crime. Two hundred burglaries. 
Thirteen homicides. Twenty-seven highway robberies. 
Forty thousand lodgers in the station houses. Three 
hundred and thirty-six scoundrels who had their pictures 
taken for the Rogues Gallery, without any expense to 
those who sat for the pictures I Two hundred thousand 
dollars' worth of property stolen. Every kind of crime, 
from manslaughter to chicken thief. Indeed, I do not 
think there is any place in the land where you can more 
easily get your pocket picked, or your house burglarized, 
or your signature counterfeited, or your estate swindled, 
8 



114 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



than in Brooklyn; but crime here is on a comparatively 
small scale, because we are a smaller city. The great 
depots of crime for this cluster of cities are in New York. 
It is a better hiding-place, the city is so vast, and all 
officers tell us that when a crime is committed in Jersey 
3ity, or is committed in Brooklyn, the villain attempts 
immediately to cross the ferry. While Brooklyn's sin 
is as enterprising as is possible for the number of in- 
habitants, crowd one million people on an island, and 
you have a stage and an audience on which and before 
whom crime may enact its worst tragedies. 

There was nothing that more impressed me on that 
terrible night of exploration than the respect which 
crime pays to law when it is really confronted. Why 
do those eight or ten desperadoes immediately stop their 
blasphemy and their uproar and their wrangling ? It is 
because an officer of the law calmly throws back the lap- 
pel of liis coat and shows the badge of authority. The 
fact is that government is ordained of heaven, and just 
80 far as the police officer does his duty, just so far is he 
a deputy of the Lord Almighty. That is the reason 
Inspector Murray, of Kew York, sometimes goes in and 
itrrests four or five desperadoes. He is a man of com- 
paratively slight stature, yet when one is backed up by 
omnipotent justice he can do anything. I said, "What 
is this glazed window, and who are these mysterious 
people going in and then coming out and passing down 
the street, looking to the pavement, and keeping a regu- 
lar step until they hear a quick step behind them, and 
then darting down an alley?" This place, in the night 
of our exploration, was what the Bible calls "a den of 
thieves." They will not admit it. You cannot prove 
it against them, for the reason that the keeper and the 
patrons are the acutest men in the city. No sign of 



AMONG THIEVES AlJD ASSASSINS. 



115 



fltolen goodSj no loud talk about misdemeanorSj but here 
a table surrounded by three or four persons whispering; 
yonder a table surrounded by three or four more per- 
sons whispering; before each man a mug of beer or 
stronger into.xicant. He will not drink to unconscious- 
ness; he will only drink to get his courage up to th© 
point of recklessness, all the while managing to keep his 
eye clear and his hand steady. These men around this 
table are talking over last night's exploit; their narrow 
escape from the basement door; how nearly they fell 
from the window-ledge of the second story; how the bul- 
let grazed the hair. What is this bandaged hand you 
see in that room ? That was cut by the window-glass as 
the burglar thrust his hand through to the inside fasten- 
ing. How did that man lose his eye? It was destroyed 
three years ago by a premature flash of gunpowder in a 
store lock. Who are these three or four surrounding 
this other table? They are planning for to-night's vil- 
lainy. They know just what hour the last member of 
the family will retire. They are in collusion with the 
servant, who has promised to leave one of the back win- 
dows open. They know at what time the man of wealth 
will leave his place of dissipation and start for home, 
and they are arranging it how they shall come out of 
the dark alley and bring him down with a slungshot. 
No sign of desperation in this room of thieves, and yet 
how many false keys, how many ugly pocket-knives, 
how many brass knuckles, how many revolvers I A few 
vulgar pictures on the wall, and the inevitable bar. Kum 
they must have to rest them after the exciting maraud- 
ing. Rum they must have before they start on the new 
expedition of arson and larceny and murder. But not 
ordinary rum. It is poisoned four times. Poisoned 
first by the manufacturer; poisoned gecondly by the 



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AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



wholesale dealer; poibuiied thirdly by the retail dealer; 
poisoned fourthly by the saloon-keeper. Poisoned four 
times, it is just right to fit one for cruelty and despera- 
tion. These men have calculated to the last quarter of 
a glass how much they need to take to qualify them for 
their work. They must not take a drop too much nor a 
drop too little. These are the professional criminals of 
the city, between twenty-three and twenty-four hundred 
of them, in this cluster of cities. They are as thoroughly 
drilled in crime as, for good purposes, medical colleges 
train doctors, law colleges train lawyers, theological 
seminaries train clergymen. These criminals have been 
apprentices and journeymen; but now they are boss 
workmen. They have gone through the freshman, 
sophomore, junior and senior classes of the great uni- 
versity of crime, and have graduated with diplomas 
signed by all the faculty of darkness. They have no 
ambition for an easy theft, or an unskilled murder, or a 
blundering blackmail. They must have something dif- 
ficult. They must have in tlieir enterprise the excite- 
ment of peril. They must have something that will give 
them an opportunity of bravado. They must do some- 
thing which amateurs in crime dare not do. These are 
the bank robbers, about sixty of them in this cluster of 
cities — men who somehow get in the bank during the 
daytime, then at night spring out upon the watchman, 
fasten him, and for the whole night have deliberate 
examination of the cashier's books to see whether he 
keeps his accounts correctly. These are the men who 
come in to examine the directory in the back part of 
your store while their accomplices are in the front part 
of the store engaging you in conversation, then drop- 
ping the directory and investigating the money safe. 
These are the forgers who get one of your canceled 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. llT 

checks and one of your blank checks, and practice on the 
writing of your name until the deception is as perfect as 
the counterfeit check of Cornelius Yanderbilt, indorsed 
hj Henry Keep, in 1870, for $75,000, which check was im- 
mediately cashed at the City Bank. These are the pick- 
pockets, six hundred of them in this cluster of cities, 
who sit beside you in the stage and help you pass up the 
change! They stand beside you when you are shopping, 
and help you examine the goods, and weep beside you at 
the funeral, and sometimes bow their heads beside you 
in the house of God, doing their work with such adroit- 
Qess that your affliction at the loss of the money is some- 
what mitigated by your appreciation of the skill of the 
operator I The most successful of these are females, 
and, I suppose, on the theory that if a woman is good 
she is better than man, and if she is bad she is worse. 
She stands so much higjier up than man that when she 
falls she falls further. Some of these criminals, pick- 
pockets, and thieves also take the garb of clergymen. 
They look like doctors of divinity. With coats buttoned 
clear up to the chin, and white cravated, they look as if 
they were just going to pronounce the benediction, 
while they are all the time wondering where your watch 
is, or your portmonnaie is. 

A thousand of the professional criminals do nothing 
but snatch things. They go in pairs, one of them keep- 
ing your attention in one part of the store, the other 
doing a lively business in another part of the store. At 
one end of the establishment the proprietor is smiling 
graciously on one who seems to be an exquisite lady, 
while in another part of the same establishment a roll of 
goods is taken up by a copartner in crime and put in a 
crocodile pocket, large enough to swallow everything. 
These professional criminals are the men who break in 



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AJMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



the windows of jewelry stores and snatch the jewels, and 
before the clerks have an opportunity of knowing what 
is the excitement are a block away, looking innocent, 
ready to come back and join in the pursuit of the offend- 
er, shouting with stentorian voice, "Stop, thief I" You 
wonder whether these people get large accumulation. 
No. Of the largest haul they get only a fifth, or a sixth, 
or a seventh part. It is the receiver of stolen goods that 
gets the profit. If these men during the course of their 
lives should get $50,000 they will live poor, and die 
poor, and be poor to all eternity. Among these profes- 
sional criminals in our cities are the blackmailers — those 
who would have you pay a certain amount of money or 
have your character tarnished. If you are guilty I have 
no counsel to give in this matter; but if you are innocent 
let me say that no one of integrity need ever fear the 
blackmailer. All you have to do is to put the case im- 
mediately in the hands of Superintendent Walling of the 
New York police, or Superintendent Campbell of the 
Brooklyn police, and you will be vindicated. Depend 
upon it, however, that every dollar you pay to a black- 
mailer is toward your own everlasting enthrallment. A 
man in a cavern fighting a tigress might as well consent 
to give the tigress his right hand, letting her eat it up, 
with the supposition that she would let him off with the 
rest of his body, as for you to pay anything to a black- 
mailer with the idea of getting your character cleared. 
The thing to be done is to have the tigress shot, and that, 
the law is willing to do. Let me lay down a principle 
you can put in your memorandum books, and put in the 
front part of your Bible, and in the back part of your 
Bible, and put in your day-book, and put in your ledger — 
this principle: that no man's character is ever sacrificed 
until he sacrifices it himself. But you surrender your 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



119 



reputation, your fortune, your home, and your immortal 
soul, when you pay a farthing to a blackmailer. 

Who are these men in this room at Hook Dock, or at 
the foot of Roosevelt street? They are professional crimi- 
nals. Under the cover of the night they go down through 
the bay, or up and down the rivers. Finding two men 
in a row boat going to 'some steamer, or to one of the ad- 
joining islands, they board the boat, rob the two men of 
their money, and, if they seem unreasonably opposed to 
giving Tip their money, taking their lives and giving 
them watery graves. These are the men who lounge 
around the solitary pier at night, and who clamber up on 
the side of the vessel lying at wharf, and, finding the 
captain asleep give him chloroform to help him sleep, 
and then knock the watchman overboard and take the 
valuables. Of this class were Howlett and Saul, who by 
twenty-one years of age had become the terror of the 
twenty-one miles of New York city water front, and who 
wound up their piracy by a murder on the bark Thomas 
Watson," and crossed the gallows, relieving the world of 
their existence. 

But in all these dens of thieves we find those who ex- 
cite only our pity — people flung off the steeps of decent 
society. Having done wrong once, in despair they went 
to the bottom. Of such was that man who last Wednes- 
day, in 'New York, stole a roll of goods, went to the sta- 
tion-house, i;aid he was hungry, and asked to be sent to 
prison. Of such are those young men who make false 
entries in the account-book, resolved to "fix it up;" or 
who surreptitiously borrow from the commercial estab- 
lishment, expecting to "fix it up;" but sickness comes, 
or accident comes, or a conjunction of unexpected circum 
stances, and they never "fix it up." 

In disgrace they go down. Oh I how many, by force of 



120 AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 

circumstances, and at the start with no very bad idea, get 
off the track and perish. A gentleman sitting in this 
assemblage this morning told me of an incident which 
occurred in a large commercial establishment,! believe the 
fourth in size in the whole country. The employer said 
to a young lady in the establishment, "You must dress 
better." She said, "I cannot dress better; I get $6 a 
week, and 1 pay $4 for my board, and I have $2 for dress 
and for my car fare; I cannot dress better." Then he 
said, "You must get it in some other way.'' Well, I 
suppose she could steal. I do not know how that inci- 
dent affects you; but when it was told to me it made 
every drop of my blood, from scalp to heel, tingle with 
indignation. The fact is that there are thousands of men 
and women dropping into dishonesty and crime by force 
of circumstances, and by their destitution. Under the 
same kind of pressure you and I would have perished. 
It is despicable to stand on shore laughing at the ship- 
wrecked struggling in the breakers when we ought to be 
getting out the rockets and the lifeboat and the ropes 
from the wrecking establishment. How much have you 
ever done to get this class ashore? In our city of Brook- 
lyn we grip them of the police. Then we hustle them 
into a court room amid a great crowd of gaping specta- 
tors. Then we throw them into the worst jail on the 
continent — Eaymond Street Jail. We put them in there 
with three or four confirmed criminals, and then actu- 
ally deny $500 to the chaplain, who is giving his time 
for the alleviation of their condition, and putting our 
refusal of the $500 on the ground that if we support 
that thing in the penitentiary, and if we have religious 
services there it will be so much like uniting church and 
State! 

"But," says some one at this point in my discourse, 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



131 



"where does all this crime come from?" Let me tell 
you that !N"ew York is now paying for the political dis- 
honesties of ten years ago. Do you believe that the 
political iniquities of 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871 could 
be enacted in any city without demoralizing the com- 
munity from top to bottom? Look at the sham elec- 
tions of 1868 and 1869. Think of those times when a 
criminal was auditor of public accounts, and honorable 
gentlemen in the legal profession were put out of sight 
by shyster lawyers, and some of the police magistrates 
were worse than the criminals arraigned before them, 
and when the most notorious thief since the creation of 
the world, was a State Senator, holding princely levee at 
the Delevan House at Albany. Ah I my friends, those 
were the times when thousands of men were put on the 
wrong track. They said: "Why, what's the use of 
honest work when knavery declares such large divi- 
dends? What's the use of my going afoot in shoes I 
have to pay for myself, when I can have gilded livery 
sweeping through Broadway supported by public funds?" 
The rule was, as far as I remember it: Get an office 
with a large salary; if you cannot get an office with a 
large salary, get an office with a small salary, and then 
steal all you can lay your hands on, and call them "per- 
quisites;" and then give subordinate offices to your 
friends, and let them help you on with the universal 
swindle, and get more "perquisites." Many of the young 
men of the cities were then eighteen years of age. They 
saw their parents hard at work with trowel and yard- 
stick and pen, getting only a cramped living, while those 
men who were throwing themselves on their political 
wits had plenty of money and no work. Do you wonder 
that thousands adopted a life of dissipated indolence? 
Ten years having passed, they are now twenty-eight 



122 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



years of age, and in full swing of vagabondism. The 
putrid politics of ten years ago sowed much of the crop 
which is now being harvested by the almshouse and the 
penitentiary. But you say, "What is the practical use 
of this subject this morning? Have I any relation to 
itV^ You have. In the last judgment you will have to 
give answer for your relation to it. Through all eternity 
you will feel the consequences of your relation to it. I 
could not waste my time, nor your time, in a discussion 
if there were not some practical significance to it. First 
of all, I give you a statistic which ought to make every 
oflSce- table, and every counting-room desk, and every 
money-safe quake and tremble. It is the statistic that 
larcenies in New York city, directly and indirectly, cost 
that city $6,000,000 per year. There are all the moneys 
taken, in the first place. Then there are the prisons 'and 
the station-houses. Then there are the courts. Then 
there is the vast machinery of municipal government for 
the arraignment and treatment of villainy. Why, the 
Court of Sessions and the police courts cost the city of 
New York about $200,000 per year. The police force 
directly and indirectly costs the city of New York over 
$2,000,000 a year, and all that expenditure puts its tax 
on every bill of lading, on every yard of goods, on every 
parlor, every nursery, every store, every shop, every brick 
from foundation to capstone, every foot of ground from 
the south side of Castle Garden to the north side of Cen- 
tral Park, and upon all Brooklyn, and upon all Jersey 
City, for the reason that the interests of these cities are 
so interlocked that what is the prosperity of one is the 
prosperity of all, and what is the calamity of one is the 
calamity of all. But I do not, this morning, address you 
as financiers. I address you as moralists and Christian 
men and women, who before God have a responsibility 



AMOiiG TillEVKS AND ASSASSINS. J 23 

for all tills turpitude and scoundrelism, unless in every 
possible way you try to stop it and redeem it. **OhI" 
says some one in the house, "such criminals as that can- 
not be reformed." I reply: Then you are stupidly ig- 
norant of Christianity, Who was the man on the right- 
hand cross when Jesus was, expiring? A thief — a dying 
thief. Where did he go to? To heaven. Christ said to 
him: "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 
In that most conspicuous moment of the world's history, 
Christ demonstrating to all ages that the worst criminal 
can be saved. Who is that man in the Fourth Ward, 
New York, preaching the gospel every night of the 
week, and preaching it all the year round, and bringing 
more drunkards and thieves and criminals to the heart 
of a pardoning God than any twenty churches in Brook- 
lyn or New York. Jerry McAuley, the converted river 
thief. That man took me to his front window the other 
evening, and he said, "Do you see that grog-shop over 
there?" I said, "Yes; I see it." * 'Well," he said, "I 
once was pitched out of that by the proprietor for being 
drunken and noisy. The grace of God has done A great 
deal for me. I was going along the street the other day, 
and that man who owned that groggery then, and who 
owns it now, wanted a favor of me, and he called to me. 
He did not call me drunken Jerry; but he said Mister 
McAuley — Mister McAuley I" 

01 if the grace of God could do as much for that man 
it can save any outcast. If not, then what is the use of 
Paul's address when he says, "Let him that stole, steal 
no more"? I will tell you something — I do not care 
whether you like it or not — that at last, in heaven, there 
will be five hundred thousand converted thieves, pick- 
pockets, gamblers, debauchees, murderers and outcasts, 
all saved by the grace of God, washed clean and prepared 



124 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



for glorj. That exquisite out tliere gives a twitch to his 
kid glove, and that lady brings the skirt of her silk dress 
nearer her, as though she were afraid of having that 
truth tarnish her. "Why," says some one in the house, 
"are you going to make heaven such a common place as 
that?" I do not make it common. God makes it com- 
mon. It is to be the most common place in the whole 
universe. By that I mean they are going to come up 
from all classes and conditions, and from the very lowest 
depths of society, washed clean by the grace of God, and 
entering heaven. "But," say some people, "what am I to 
do'^" I will tell you three things, anyhow, you can do. 
First, avoid putting people in your employ amid too 
great temptation. You can take a young man in your 
employ and put him in a position where nine hundred 
and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand are that he 
will do wrong. "Now, I say you have no right to do that. 
If you have any mercy on the criminal classes, and if 
you do not want to multiply their number, look out how 
you put people under temptation. In the second place, 
you can do this: you can speak a cheerful word when a 
man wants to reform. What chance is there for those 
who have gone astray! Here they are in the lowest 
depths of society, first of all, with their evil proclivities; 
then, with their evil associations. But suppose they 
conquer these evil proclivities, and break away from 
them. JS'ow, they have come up to the door of society. 
Who will let them in? Will you? No; you dare not. 
Tliey will go all around tliese doors of decent society, 
and find five hundred, and knock — no admittance; and 
knock — no admittance; and knock — no admittance. Now, 
I say it is your duty as a Christian man to help these 
people when they want to come up and come back. 
There is a third thing you can do, and that is, be the 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



126 



stanch friends of prison reform associations, home mis- 
gionary societies, children's aid societies, and all those 
beneficent institutions which are trying to save our cities. 
But perhaps I ought to do my own work now, leaving 
yours for you to do some other time. I will now do 
that work. Yery probably there is not in all this house 
one person who is known as a criminal, and yet I sup- 
pose there are scores of persons in this house who have 
done wrong. Now, perhaps I may meet their case 
healthfully and encouragingly when I tell them what I 
said to two young men. One young man said to me: 
"I have taken from my employer $2,500 in small amounts, 
but amounting to that. What shall I do?" I said, 
"Pay it back." He said, "I can't pay it back." Then 
I said, "Get your friends to help you pay it." H< 
said, "I have no friends that will help me." Then 1 
said, "I will give you two items of advice: First, go 
home and kneel down before God and ask his pardon. 
Then, to-morrow morning, when you go over to the store, 
get the head men of the firm in the private office, and 
tell them you have something very important to com- 
municate, and let the door be locked. Then tell the 
whole story and ask their pardon. If they are decent 
men — not to say any thing about their being Christiana 
or not Christians — if they are decent men, they will for- 
give you and help you to start again." "But," he said, 
"suppose they don't?" "Then," I said, "you have the 
Lord Almighty to see you through, and no man ever 
flung himself at Christ's feet but he was helped and de- 
livered." Another young man came to me and said, "I 
have taken money from my employer. What shall I 
dor I said, "Pay it back." "Well," he said, "I took 
a very large amount — I nearly paid it all back." I said, 
"Now, how long before you can pay it all back?" "Well," 



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AMONG THIEVES AND A.8SASSIK8. 



he said, "I can in two weeks, but my conscience disturbs 
me very macb, and I want yonr counsel." It was a del- 
icate case. I said to him, "You are sure you can pay it 
in two weeks?" "Yes; but," he said, "suppose I die?" I 
said to him: "If you can pay that all up, every farthing 
of it, in two weeks, pay it, and God don't ask you to dis- 
grace yourself, or your family, and you won't die in two 
weeks. I see by the way you have been paying this up 
that you are going to be delivered. Ask God's pardon 
for what you have done, and never do so again." 

It is very easy to be hard in making a rule, but I say 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of mercy, and 
wherever you find anybody in trouble, get him out. 
" Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
man his thoughts." You see, I am preaching a very 
practical sermon this morning. I know what are all the 
temptations of business life, and I did not come on this 
platform this morning to discourage anybody. I come 
to speak a word of good cheer to all the wandering and 
the lost, and I believe I am speaking it. The fact is, 
these cities are going to be redeemed. You know there 
is going to be another deluge. "Why," you say, "I 
thought the rainbow at the end of the great deluge, 
and the rainbow after every shower, was a sign that 
there would never be a deluge again !" But there 
will be another deluge. It will rain more than forty 
days and forty nights. The ark that will float that 
deluge will be immeasurably larger than I^oah's ark, for 
it will hold a quadrillion of passengers. It will be the 
deluge of mercy, and the ark that floats that deluge will 
have flve doors — one at the north to let in the frozen 
populations; one at the south to let in the sweltering 
and the sunburned; one at the east to let all China come 
in; one at the west, to let America in; one at the top, 



AMONG THIEVES AND ASSASSINS. 



to let Christ, with all his flashing train of cherubim and 
archangel enter. And, as the rainbow of the ancient 
deluge gave sign that there would never be a deluge of 
destruction again, so the rainbow of this last deluge will 
give sign that the deluge will never depart. " For the 
knowledge of God shall cover the earth, as the waters 
cover the sea." Oh I ship of salvation, sail on. With all 
thy countless freight of immortals, put for the eternal 
shore. The thunders of the last day shall be the can- 
nonade that will greet you into the harbor. Church 
triumphant, stretch down your arms of light across the 
gangway to welcome into port, church militant. " Hal- 
lelujah 1 for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." Hal- 
lelujah 1 Amenl 



128 



OLUB-HOUSl&S. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

CLUB-HOUSES— LEGITIMATE AND ILLEGITIMATE. 

Let the young men now arise and play before us. — II. Samuel ii : 14 

There are two armies encamped by the pool of Gibeon. 
The time hangs heavily on their hands. One army pro- 
poses a game of sword-fencing. ITothing could be more 
healthful and innocent. The other army accepts the 
challenge Twelve men against twelve men, the sport 
opens. But something went adversely. Perhaps one 
of the swordsmen got an unlucky clip, or in some way 
had his ire aroused, and that which opened in sportful- 
ness ended in violence, each one taking his contestant by 
the hair, and then with the sword thrusting him in the 
side; so that that which opened in innocent fun ended in 
the massacre of all the twenty-four sportsmen. Was 
there ever a better illustration of what was true then, 
and is true now, that that which is innocent may be made 
destructive? 

In my explorations of the night side of city life, I 
have found out that there is a legitimate and an illegiti- 
mate use of the club-house. In the one case it may be- 
come a heathful recreation, like the contest of the twenty- 
four men in the text when they began their play; in the 
other case it becomes the massacre of body, mind, and 
soul, as in the case of these contestants of the text when 
they had gone too far with their sport. All intelligent 
ages have had their gatherings for political, social, ar- 
tistic, literary purposes — gatherings characterized by the 
blunt old Anglo-Saxon designation of "club." If you 



0LUB-H0USE8. 



129 



have read history, jou know that there was a King's 
Head Club, a Ben Jonson Club; a Brothers' Club, to 
which Swift and Bolingbroke belonged; a Literary Club, 
which Burke and Goldsmith and Johnson and Boswell 
made immortal ; a Jacobin Club, a Benjamin FrankKn 
Junto Club. Some of these to indicate justice, some to 
favor the arts, some io promote good manners, some to 
despoil the habits, some to destroy the soul. If one will 
write an honest history of the clubs of England, Ireland, 
Scotland, France, and the United States for the last one 
hundred years, he will write the history of the world. 
The club was an institution born on English soil, but it 
has thrived well in American atmosphere. We have in 
this cluster of cities a great number of them, with sev- 
enty thousand members, so called, so known; but who 
shall tell how many belong to that kind of club where 
men put purses together and open house, apportioning 
the expense of caterer and servants and room, and hav- 
ing a sort of domestic establishment — a style of club- 
house which in my opinion is far better than the ordi- 
nary hotel or boardiag-house? But my object now is to 
speak of club-houses of a different sort, such as the Union 
League, which was established during the war, having 
patriotic purposes, which has now between thirteen and 
fourteen hundred members, which is now also the head- 
quarters of Eepublicanism; likewise the Manhattan, 
with large admission fee, four or five hundred members^ 
the headquarters of the Democracy; like the Union Club, 
established in 1836, when New York had only a little 
over three hundred thousand inhabitants, their present 
building having cost $250,000 — they have a membership 
of between eight and nine hundred people, among them 
some of the leading merchant princes of the land; like 
the Lotos, where journalists, dramatists, sculptors, paint- 



180 



OLUB-HOnSES. 



ers and artists, from all branches, gather together to dis- 
cuss newspapers, theatres, and elaborate art; like the 
Americas, which camps out in summer time, dimpling 
the pool with its hook and arousing the forest with its 
stag hunt; like the Century Club, which has its large 
group of venerable lawyers and poets; like the Army 
and Navy Club, where those who engaged in warlike ser- 
vice once on the land or the sea now come together to 
talk over the days of carnage; like the New York Yacht 
Club, with its floating palaces of beauty upholstered with 
velvet and paneled with ebony, having all the advantages 
of electric bell, and of gaslight, and of king's pantry, 
one pleasure-boat costing three thousand, another fifteen 
thousand, another thirty thousand, another sixty-five 
thousand dollars, the fleet of pleasure-boats belonging to 
the club having cost over two million dollars; like the 
American Jockey Club, to which belong men who have 
a passionate fondness for horses, fine horses, as had Job 
when, in the Scriptures, he gives us a sketch of thai 
king of beasts, the arch of its neck, the nervousness of 
its foot, the majesty of its gait, the whirlwind of its 
power, crying out: "Hast thou clothed his neck with 
thunder? The glory of his nostrils is terrible; he paw- 
eth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength, he saith 
among the trumpets ha I hal and he smelleth the battle 
afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting;" 
like the Travelers' Club, the Blossom Club, the Palette 
Club, the Commercial Club, the Liberal Club, the Stable 
Gang Club, the Amateur Boat Club, the gambling clubs, 
the wine clubs, the clubs of all sizes, the clubs of all 
morals, clubs as good as good can be, and clubs as bad as 
bad can be, clubs innumerable. No series of sermons 
on the night side of city life would be complete without a 
sketch of the clubs, which, after dark, are in full blast 



OLITB-HOUSBB. 



131 



During the day they are comparatively lazy places. 
Here and there an aged man reading a newspaper, or an 
employee dusting a sofa, or a clerk writing up the ac- 
counts; but when the curtain of the night falls on the 
natural day, then the curtain of the club-house hoists 
for the entertainment. Let us hasten up, now, the mar- 
ble stairs. What an imperial hall way I See! here are 
parlors on this side, with the upholstery of the Kremlin 
and the Tuilleries; and here are dining-halls that chal- 
lange you to mention any luxury that they cannot afford; 
and here are galleries with sculpture, and paintings, and 
lithographs, and drawings from the best of artists, Crop- 
sey, and Bierstadt, and Church, and Hart, and Gifford — 
pictures for every mood, whether you are impassioned or 
placid; shipwreck, or sunlight over tiie sea; Sheridan's 
Ride, or the noonday party of the farmers under the 
tree; foaming deer pursued by the hounds in the Adiron- 
dacks, or the sheep on the lawn. On this side there are 
reading-rooms where you find all newspapers and maga- 
zines. On that side there is a library, where you find all 
books, from hermeneutics to the fairy tale. Coming in 
and out there are gentlemen, some of whom stay ten 
minutes, others stay many hours. Some of these are 
from luxuriant homes, and they have excused themselves 
for a while from the domestic circle that they may enjoy 
the larger sociability of the club-house. These are from 
dismembered households, and they have a plain lodging 
somewhere, but they come to this club-room to have their 
chief enjoyment. One blackball amid ten votes will de- 
feat a man's becoming a member. For rowdyism, for 
drunkenness, for gambling, for any kind of misdemeanor, 
a member is dropped out. Brilliant club-house from top 
to bottom. The chandeliers, the plate, the furniture, the 



OLUB-HOUSBS. 



companionship, the literature, the social prestige, a com 
plete enchantment. 

But the evening is passing on, and so we hasten 
through the hall and down the steps, and into the street, 
and from block to block until we come to another style 
of club-house. Opening the door, we find the fumes 
of strong drink and tobacco something almost intolera- 
ble. These young men at this table, it is easy to under- 
stand what they are at, from the flushed cheek, the intent 
look, the almost angry way of tossing the dice, or of 
moving the "chips." They are gambling. At another 
table are men who are telling vile stories. They are 
three-fourths intoxicated, and between 12 and 1 o'clock 
they will go staggering, hooting, swearing, shouting on 
their way home. Tliat is an only son. On him all kind- 
ness, all care, all culture has been bestowed. He is pay- 
ing his parents in this way for their kindness. That is 
a young married man, who, only a few months ago, at the 
altar, made promises of kindness and fidelity, every one 
of which he has broken. Walk through and see for your- 
self. Here are all the implements of dissipation and of 
quick death. As the hours of the night go away, the con- 
versation becomes imbecile and more debasing. Now it 
is time to shut up. Those who are able to stand will get 
out on the pavement and balance themselves against the 
lamp-post, or against the railings of the fence. The 
young man who is not able to stand will have a bed im- 
provised for him in the club-house, or two not quite so 
overcome with liquor will conduct him to his father's 
liouse, and they will ring the door-bell, and the door will 
open, and the two imbecile escorts will introduce into 
the hallway the ghastliest and most hellish spectacle that 
ever enters a front door — a drunken son. If the dissi- 
pating club-houses of this country would make a contract 



CLUB-HOUSES. 



133 



with the Inferno to provide it ten thousand men a year 
and for twenty years, on the condition that no more 
should be asked of them, the club-houses could afford to 
make that contract, for they would save homesteads, save 
fortunes, save bodies, minds, and souls. The ten thou- 
sand men who would be sacrificed by that contract would 
be but a small part of the multitude sacrificed without 
the contract. But I make a vast difierence between 
clubs. I have belonged to four clubs: A theological 
club, a ball club, and two literary clubs. I' got from 
them physical rejuvenation and moral health. What 
shall be the principle? If God will help me, I will lay 
down three principles by which you may judge whether 
the club where you are a member, or the club to which 
you have been invited, is a legitimate or an illegitimate 
club-house. 

First of all I want you to test the club by its influences 
on home, if you have a home. I have been told by a 
prominent gentleman in club life that three-fourths of 
the members of the great clubs of these cities are mar- 
ried men. That wife soon loses her influence over her 
husband who nervously and foolishly looks upon all even- 
ing absence as an assault on domesticity. How are the 
great enterprises of art and literature and beneficence 
and public weal to be carried on if every man is to have 
his world bounded on one side by his front door-step, and 
on the other side by his back window, knowing nothing 
higher than his own attic, or nothing lower than his own 
cellar? That wife who becomes jealous of her husband's 
attention to art, or literature, or religion, or charity, is 
breaking her own sceptre of conjugal power. I know in 
this church an instance where a wife thought that her 
husband was giving too many nights to Christian ser- 
vice, to charitable service, to prayer- meetings, and to 



184 



CLUB-HOUSES. 



religious convocation. She sjtematically decoyed him 
away until now he attends neither this nor any other 
church, and is on a rapid way to destruction, his morals 
gone, his money gone, and, I fear, his soul gone. Let 
any Christian wife rejoice when her husband consecrates 
evenings to the service of God, or to charity, or to art, or 
*o anything elevated; but let not men sacrifice home life 
to club life. I have the rolls of the members of a great 
many of the prominent clubs of these cities, and I can 
point out to you a great many names of men who are guilty 
of this sacrilege. They are as genial as angels at the club- 
house, and as ugly as sin at home. They are generous 
on all subjects of wine suppers, yachts, and fast horses, 
but they are stingy about the wife's dress and the chil- 
dren's shoes. That man has made that which might be 
a healthful recreation an usurper of his affections, and 
he has married it, and he is guilty of moral bigamy. 
Under this process the wife, whatever her features, be- 
comes uninteresting and homely. He becomes critical 
of her, does not like the dress, does not like the way she 
arranges her hair, is amazed that he ever was so unro- 
mantic as to offer her hand and heart. She is always 
wanting money, money, when she ought to be discussing 
Eclipses, and Dexter, and Derby Day, and English drags 
with six horses, all answering the pull of one "ribbon." 

I tell you, there are thousands of houses in Brooklyn 
and New York being clubbed to death! There are club- 
houses in these cities where membership always involves 
domestic shipwreck. Tell me that a man has joined a 
certain club, tell me nothing more about him for ten 
years, and I will write his history if he be still alive. 
The man is a wine-guzzler, his wife broken-hearted or 
prematurely old, his fortune gone or reduced, and his 
home a mere name in a directory. Here are six secular 



CLUB-HOUSES. 



135 



nights in the week. " What shall 1 do with them?" says 
the father and the husband. " I will give four of those 
nights to the improvement and entertainment of my fam- 
ily, either at liome or in good neighborhood; I will 
devote one to charitable institutions; I will devote one 
to the club." I congratulate jou. Here is a man who 
says, " I will make a different division of the six nights. 
I will take three for the club and three for other pur- 
poses." 1 tremble. Here is a man who says, " Out of 
the six secular nights of the week, I will devote five to 
the club-house and one to the home, which night I will 
spend in scowling like a March squall, wishing I was out 
spending it as I had spent the other five." That man's 
obituary is written. Not one out of ten thousand that 
ever gets so far on the wrong road ever stops. Gradu- 
ally his health will fail, through late hours and through 
too much stimulus. He will be first-rate prey for erysip- 
elas and rheumatism of the heart. The doctor coming 
in will at a glance see it is not only present disease he 
must fight, but years of fast living. The clergyman, for 
the sake of the feelings of the family, on the funeral day 
will only talk in religious generalities. The men who 
got his yacht in the eternal rapids will not be at the 
obsequies. They will have pressing engagements that 
day. They will send fiowers to the coffin-lid, and send 
their wives to utter words of sympathy, but they will 
have engagements elsewhere. They never come. Bring 
me mallet and chisel, and I will cut on the tombstone 
that man's epitaph, " Blessed are the dead who die in the 
Lord." " No," you say, " that would not be appropriate," 
" Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last 
end be like his." " No," you say, " that would not be 
appropriate." Then give me the mallet and the chisel, 
and I will cut an honest epitaph: '^Here lies the victim 



136 



OLUB-HOUSBS. 



of a dissipating club-house I think that damage ie 
often done by the scions of some aristocratic family, who 
belong to one of these dissipating club-houses. People 
coming up from humbler classes feel it an honor to be- 
long to the same club, forgetting the fact that many of 
the sons and grandsons of the large commercial estab- 
lishments of the last generation are now, as to mind, 
imbecile; as to body, diseased; as to morals, rotten. 
They would have got through their property long ago it 
they had had full possession of it; but the wily ancestors, 
who got the money by hard knocks, foresaw how it was to 
be, and they tied up everything in the will. Now, there 
is nothing of that unworthy descendant but his grand- 
father's name and roast beef rotundity. And yet how 
many steamers there are which feel honored to lash fast 
that worm-eaten tug, though it drags them straight into 
the breakers. 

Another test by which you can find whether your club 
is legitimate or illegitimate — the effect it has on your 
secular occupation. I can understand how through such 
an institution a man can reach commercial successes. 
I know some men have formed their best business rela- 
tions through such a channel. If the club has advan- 
taged you in an honorable calling it is a legitimate club. 
But has your credit failed? Are* bargain-makers more 
cautious how they trust you with a bill of goods? Have 
the men whose names were down in the commercial 
agency A 1 before they entered the club, been going down 
since in commercial standing? Then look out I You 
and I every day know of commercial establishments going 
to ruin through the social excesses of one or two mem- 
bers. Their fortunes beaten to death with ball-players' 
bat, or cut amidships by the front prow of the regatta, 
or going down under the swift hoofs of the fast horses, 



OLUB-HOUSES. 



13T 



ur drowned in large potations of Cognac and Mononga- 
hela. Their club-house was the " Loch Earn." Their 
business house was the *' Yille du Havre." They struck, 
and the "Yille du Havre" went under. s,Or, to take 
illustration from last Monday night^s disaster: Their 
club-house was the " Eilion," and their business house 
was the " Pommerania." They struck, and the Pom- 
merania" went under. 

A third test by which you may know whether the club 
to which you belong, or the club to whose membership 
you are invited, is a legitimate club or an illegitimate 
club, is this: What is its effect on your sense of moral 
and religious obligation? Now, if I should take the 
names of all the people in this audience this morning, 
and put them on a roll and then I should lay that roll 
back of this organ, and a hundred years from now 
some one should take that roll and call it from A to Z, 
there would not one of you answer. I say that any 
association that makes me forget that fact is a bad 
association. When I go to Chicago I am sometimes 
perplexed at Buffalo, as I suppose many travelers 
are, as to whether it is better to take the Lake Shore 
route or the Michigan Central, equally expeditious and 
equally safe, getting at the destination at the same time; 
but suppose that I hear that on one route the track is 
torn up, and the bridges are torn down, and the switches 
are unlocked? It will not take me a great while to de- 
cide which road to take. Now, here are two roads into 
the future, the Christian and the unchristian, the safe 
and the unsafe. Any institution or any association that 
confuses my idea in regard to that fact is a bad institu- 
tion and a bad association. I had prayers before I joined 
the club. Did I have them after? I attended the house 
of God before I connected myself with the club. Since 



138 



CLUB-HOUSES. 



that union with the club do I absent myself from reli- 
gious influences? Which would you rather have in your 
hand when you come to die, a pack of cards or a Bible? 
Which would %jo\i rather have pressed to your lips in the 
closing moment, the cup of Belshazzarean wassail or the 
chalice of Christian communion ? Who would you rather 
have for your pall-bearers, the elders of a Christian 
church, or the companions whose conversation was full 
of slang and innuendo ? Who would you rather have for 
your eternal companions, those men who spend their 
evenings betting, gambling, swearing, carousing, and 
telling vile stories, or your little child, that bright girl 
whom the Lord took? Oh! you would not have been 
away so much nights, would you, if you had known she 
was going away so soon ? Dear me, your house has never 
been the same place since. Your wife has never bright- 
ened up. She has not got over it; she never will g^"- 
over it. How long the evenings are, with no one to put 
to bed, and no one to tell the beautiful Bible story! 
What a pity it is that you cannot spend more evenings 
at home in trying to help her bear that sorrow! You 
can never drown that grief in the wine cup. You can 
never break away from the little arms that used to be 
flung around your neck when she used to say, " Papa, 
do stay home to-night — do stay home to-night." You 
will never be able to wipe from your lips the dying kiss 
of your little girl. The fascination of a dissipating club- 
house is so great that sometimes a inan has turned his 
back on his home when his child was dying of scarlet 
fever. He went away. Before he got back at midnight 
the eyes had been closed, the undertaker had done his 
work, and the wife, worn out with three weeks watching, 
lay unconscious in the next room. Then there is a rat- 
tling of the night-key in the door, and the returned father 



CLUB-HOUSES. 



189 



comes np stairs, and he sees the cradle gone, and the 
windows up, and says, What's the matter?" In the 
judgment day he will find out what was the matter. 
Oh I man astray, God help youl I am going to make a 
very stout rope. You know that sometimes a rope- 
maker will take very small threads, and wind them to- 
gether until, after a while, they become ship-cable. And 
I am going to take some very small, delicate threads, 
and wind them together until they make a very stout 
rope. I will take all the memories of the marriage day, 
a thread of laughter, a thread of light, a thread of music, 
a thread of banqueting, a thread of congratulation, and 
I twist them together, and I have one strand. Then I 
take a thread of the hour of the first advent in your house, 
a thread of the darkness that preceded, and a thread of 
the light that followed, and a thread of the beautiful 
scarf that little child used to wear when she bounded out 
at eventide to greet you, and then a thread of the beau- 
tiful dress in which you laid her away for the resurrec- 
tion. And then I twist all these threads together, and 
I have another strand. Then I take a thread of the 
scarlet robe of a suffering Christ, and a thread of the 
white raiment of your loved ones before the throne, and a 
string of the harp cherubic, and a string of the harp 
seraphic, and I twist them all together, and I have a third 
strand. " Oh!" you say, " either strand is strong enough 
to hold fast a world." No, I will take these strands, 
and I will twist them together, and one end of that 
rope I will fasten, not to the communion table for it shall 
be removed — not to a pillar of the organ, for that will 
crumble in the ages, but I wind it 'round and 'round 
the cross of a sympathizing Christ, and having fastened 
one end of the rope to the cross I throw the other end 
to you. Lay hold of it I Pull for your life! Pull for 
heaven! 



140 



FOISON IN THE OALDBOH. 



CHAPTER IX. 

POISON IN THE CALDRON. 
" O thou man of God, there is death in the pot*'— II. Kings ir: 1ft 

Elisha had gone down to lecture to the theological 
students in the seminary at Gilgal. He found the stu- 
dents very hungry. Students are apt to be. In order 
that he might proceed with his lectures successfully, he 
sends out some servants to gather food for these hungry 
students. The servants are somewhat reckless in their 
work, and while they gather up some healthful herbs, 
they at the same time gather coloquintida, a bitter, pois- 
onous, deathful weed, and they bring all the herbs to 
the house and put them in a caldron and stir them up, 
and then bring the food to the table, where are seated 
the students and their professor. One of the students 
takes some of the mixture and puts it to his lips, and 
immediately tastes the coloquintida, and he cries out to 
the professor: "O thou man of God, there is death in the 
pot." What consternation it threw upon the group. 
What a fortunate thing it was he found out in time, so 
as to save the lives of his comrades. 

Well, there are now in the world a great many caldrons 
of death. The coloquintida of mighty temptations fills 
them. Some taste and quit, and are saved; others taste 
and eat on, and die. Is not that minister of Christ 
doing the right thing when he points out these caldrons 
of iniquity and cries the alarm, saying: " Beware 1 There 
is death in the pot" ? 

In a palace in Florence there is a fresco of Giotto. 



POISON IN THE CALDRON. 



141 



For many jears that fresco was covered up with two 
inches thickness of whitewash, and it has only been in 
recent times that the hand of art has restored that fresco. 
"What sacrilege," you say, " to destroy the work of such 
a great master." But there is no sadness in that com- 
pared with the fact that the image of God in the soul 
has been covered up and almost obliterated so that no 
human hand can restore the Divine lineaments. 

Iniquity is a coarse, jagged thing, that needs to be 
roughly handled. You have no right to garland it with 
fine phrase or lustrous rhetoric. You cannot catch a 
buffalo with a silken lasso. Men have no objections to 
having their sin looked at in a pleasant light. They 
will be very glad to sit for their photographs if you mak 
a handsome picture. But every Christian philanthropist 
must sometimes go forth and come in violent collision 
with transgression. I was in a whaling port, and I saw 
a vessel that had been on a whaling cruise come into the 
harbor, and it had patched sail and spliced rigging and 
bespattered deck, showing hard times and rough work. 
And 80 I have seen Christian philanthropists come back 
from some crusade against public iniquities. They have 
been compelled to acknowledge that it has not been 
yachting over summer lakes, but it has been outriding a 
tempest and harpooning great Behemoths. 

A company of emigrants settle in a wild region. The 
very first day a beast from the mountains comes down 
and carries off one of the children, and the next day 
another beast comes and carries off another child. 
Forthwith all the neighbors band together, and with 
torch in one hand and gun in the other they go down 
into the caverns where those wild beasts are secreted, 
and slay them. 

J^ow, my Christian friends, this morning I want to go 



142 



POISON IN THE CALDEON. 



back of all public iniquity and find out its hiding-place. 
I want to know what are the sources of its power, or, to 
resume the figure of my text, I want to know what are 
the caldrons from which these iniquities are dipped out. 

Unhappy and undisciplined homes are the source of 
much, iniquity. A good home is deathless in its influ- 
ences. Parents may be gone. The old homestead may 
be sold and have passed out of the possession of the 
family. The house itself may be torn down. The 
meadow brook that ran in front of the house may have 
changed its course or have dried up. The long line of 
old-fashioned sunflowers and the hedges of wild rose may 
have been graded, and in place thereof are now the beau- 
lies of modern gardening. The old poplar tree may have 
cast down its crown of verdure and may have fallen. 
You say you would like to go back a little while and see 
that home, and you go, and oh, how changed it isl Yet 
that place will never lose its charm over your soul. 
That first earthly home will thrill through your ever- 
lasting career. The dew-drops that you dashed from the 
chickweed as you drove the cows afield thirty years ago; 
the fire flies that flashed in your father's home on sum- 
mer nights when the evenings were too short for a can- 
dle; the tinged pebbles that you gathered in your apron 
on the margin of the brook; the berries that you strung 
into a necklace, and the daisies that you plucked for 
your hair, — all have gone into your sentiments and 
tastes, and you will never get over them. The trundle 
bed where you slept; the chair where you sat; the blue- 
edged dish out of which you ate; your sister's skipping- 
rope; your brother's ball; your kite; your hoop; your 
mother's smile; your father's frown, — they are all part 
of the fibre of your immortal nature. The mother of 
missionary Schwartz threw light on the dusky brow of 



POISON IN THE CALDEOH. 



143 



the savages to wHom he preached long after she was 
dead. The mother of Lord Bjron pursued him, as with 
a fiend's fury, into all lands, stretching gloom and death 
into "Childe Harold " and " Don Juan," and hovering 
in darkness over the lonely grave of Missolonghi. 

Rascally and vagabond people for the most part come 
forth from unhappy homes. Parents harsh and cruel on 
the one hand, or on the other lenient to perfect looseness, 
are raising up a generation of vipers. A home in which 
scolding and fault-finding predominate is blood relation 
to the gallows and penitentiary. Petulance is a reptile 
that may crawl up into the family nest and crush it. 
There are parents who disgust their children even with 
religion. They scold their little ones for not loving 
God. They go about even their religious duties in an 
exasperating way. Their house is full of the war-whoop 
of contention, and from such scenes husbands and child- 
ren dash out into places of dissipation to find their lost 
peace, or the peace they never had. O, is there some 
mother here, like Hagar, leading her Ishmael into the 
desert to be smitten of the thirst and parched in the 
sand? In the solemn birth-hour a voice fell straight 
from the skies into that dwelling, saying: "Take this 
child and nurse it for Me, and I will give thee thy 
wages." When angels of God at nightfall hover over that 
dwelling, do they hear the little ones lisp the name of 
Jesus 1 O, traveller for eternity, with your little ones 
gathered up under your robes, are you sure you are on 
the right road, or are you leading them on a dangerous 
and winding bridle path, off which their inexperienced 
feet may slip, and up which comes the howling of the 
wolf and the sound of loosening ledge and tumbling 
avalanche! Blessed the family altar where the children 
kneel. Blessed the cradle where the Christian mother 



POISON IN THE OALDKON. 



rocks the Christian child. Blessed the song the little 
one sings at nightfall when sleep is closing the eyes and 
roosening the hand from the toy on the pillow. Blessed 
the mother's heart whose every throb is a prayer to God 
for the salvation of her children. The world grows old, 
and soon the stars will cease to illuminate it, and the 
herbage to clothe it, and the mountains to guard it, and 
the waters to refresh it, and the heavens to overspan it, 
and the long story of its sin, and shame, and glory, and 
triumph will turn into ashes; but parental influences, 
starting in the early home, will roll on and up into the 
great eternity, blooming in all the joy, waving in all the 
triumph, exulting in all the song of heaven, or groaning 
in all the pain, and shrinking back into all the shame, 
and frowning in all the darkness of the great prison 
house. O, father I O, mother I in which direction is 
your influence tending? 

I verily believe that three-fourths of the wickedness 
of the great city runs out rank and putrid from undisci- 
plined homes. Sometimes I know there is an exception. 
From a bright, beautiful, cheerful Christian home a 
husband or a son will go off to die. How long you have 
had that boy in your prayer. He does not know the 
tears you have shed. He knows nothing about the 
sleepless nights you have passed about him. He started 
on the downward road, and will not stop, call you never 
so tenderly. O, it is hard, it is very hard, after having 
expended so much kindness and care to get such pay of 
ingratitude. There is many a young man, proud of his 
mother, who would strike into the dust the dastard who 
would dare to do her wrong, whose hand this morning, 
by his first step in sin, is sharpening a dagger to plunge 
through that mother's heart. I saw it. The telegram 
summoned him. I saw him come in scarred and bloated, 



POISON IN THE OALDBON. 



145 



to look upon the lifeless form of his mother — those grey 
locks pushed back over the wrinkled brow he had whit- 
ened by his waywardness. Those eyes had rained 
floods of tears over his iniquity. That still, white hand 
had written many a loving letter of counsel and invita- 
tion. He had broken that old heart. When he came in 
he threw himself on the coffin and sobbed outright and 
cried: "Mother I mother!" but the lips that kissed him 
in infancy and that had spoken so kindly on other days 
when he came home, spake not. They were sealed for- 
ever. Rather than such a memory in my soul, I would 
have rolled on me now the Alps and the Himalayas. 
" The eye that mocketh its father, and refuseth to obey 
its mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and 
the young eagles shall eat it." 

The second caldron of iniquity to which I point you 
is an indolent life. There are young men coming to our 
city with industrious habits, and yet they see in the city 
a great many men who seem to get along without any 
work. They have no business, and yet they are better 
dressed than industrious men, and they seem to have 
more facilities of access to amusements. They have 
plenty of time to spare to hang around the engine house, 
Dr the Pierrepont House, or the Saint Nicholas, or the 
other beautiful hotels;- or lounge around the City Hall, 
their hands in their pockets, a tooth-pick in their mouth, 
waiting for some crumb to fall from the office-holder's 
table; or gazing at the criminals as they come up in the 
morning from the station-houses, jeering at them as they 
leap from the city van to the Court House steps. Ah, I 
would as soon think of standing at the gate of Green- 
wood to enjoy a funeral as to stand at the City Hall in 
the morning, when the city van drives up, to look at the 
carcasses of men and women slain for both worlds. The 



146 



POISON IN THE OALDBON. 



industrious people see these idlers standing about, and 
they wonder how they make their living. I wonder, too. 
They have plenty of money for the ride; they have 
plenty of money to bet on the boat race or the horse race; 
they can discuss the flavor of the costliest wines; they 
they have the best seats at Booth's Theater. But still 
you ask me: "How do they get their money?" Well, 
my friends, there are four ways of getting money — just 
four. By inheritance; by earning it; by begging it; by 
stealing it. Now, there are many people in our com- 
munity who seem to have plenty of money, who did not 
inherit it, and who did not earn it, and who did not beg 
it. You must take the responsibility of saying how 
they got it. There are men who get tired of the drudg- 
ery of life, and see these prosperous idlers; and they con- 
sort with them, and they learn the same tricks, and they 
go to the same ruin — at death their departure causing 
no more mourning than is felt for the fast horse that 
they foundered and killed by a too hasty watering at 
*' Tunison's." O, the pressure on the industrious young 
men is tremendous when they see people all around 
them full of seeming success but doing nothing. The 
multitude of those who get their living by sleight of 
hand is multiplying. What is the use of working in the 
store, or office, or shop, or on the scaffold, or by the 
forge, when you can get your living by your wits? A 
merchant in New York was passing along the street one 
evening, and he saw one of his clerks, half disguised, 
going into one of the low theaters. He said within him- 
self: " I must look out for that young man." One morn- 
ing the merchant came to his store, and this clerk of 
whom I have been speaking came up, in assumed con- 
sternation, and said : "The store has been on fire. I have 
got it put out; but many of the goods are gone." The 



POISON IN THE OALDBON. 147 • 

merchant instantly seized the young man by the collar, 
and said: " I have had enough of this. Yon can't de- 
ceive me. Where are the goods you stole?" And the 
clerk confessed it instantly. The young man had gone 
into the plan of making money by sleight of hand and 
by his wits. 

You will get out of this world just so much as, under 
God, you earn by your own hand and brain. Horatius 
was told he might have so much land as he could plough 
around in one day with a yoke of oxen, and I have no- 
ticed that men get nothing in this world, that is worth 
possessing, of a financial, moral, or spiritual nature, save 
they get it by their own hard work. It is just so much 
as, from the morning to the evening of your life, you 
can plough around by your own continuous and hard- 
sweating industries. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, 
consider her ways, and be wise." 

Another caldron of iniquity is the dram shop. Surely 
there is death in the pot. Anacharsis said that the vine 
had three grapes: pleasure, drunkenness, misery. Rich- 
ard III. drowned his own brother Clarence in a butt of 
wine — these two incidents quite typical. Every saloon 
built above ground, or dug underground is a center of 
evil. It may be licensed, and for some time it may con- 
duct its business in elegant style; but after awhile the 
cover will fall otf, and you will see the iniquity in its 
right coloring. Plant a grog shop in the midst of the 
finest block of houses in your city, and the property will 
depreciate five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty per cent. Men en- 
gaged in the ruinous traffic sometimes say: "You don't 
appreciate the fact that the largest revenues paid to the 
Government are by our business." Then I remember 
what Gladstone, the prime minister of England, said to 
a committee^ of men engaged in that traffic when they 



148 



POISON IN THE CALDIION. 



came to him to deplore that they were not treated with 
more consideration: "Gentlemen, don't be uneasy about 
the revenue. Give me thirty million sober people, and 
I will pay all the revenue, and have a large surplus." 
But, my friends, the ruin to property is a very small 
part of the evil. It takes everything that is sacred in 
the family, everything that is holy in religion, everything 
that is infinite in the soul, and tramples it into the mire. 

The marriage day has come. The happy pair at the 
altar. The music sounds. The gay lights flash. The 
feet bound up and down the drawing-room. Started on 
a bright voyage of life. Sails all up. The wind is abaft. 
You prophesy everything beautiful. . But the scene 
changes. A dingy garret. No fire. On a broken chair 
sits a sorrowing woman. Her last hope gone. Poor, 
disgraced, trodden underfoot — she knows the despair of 
being a drunkard's wife. The gay barque that danced 
off on the marriage morning has become a battered hulk, 
dismasted and shipwrecked. ''O," she says, *'he was as 
good a man as ever lived. He was so kind, he was so 
generous — no one better did God ever create than he; 
but the drink, the drink did it." 

A young man starts from the country home for the 
city. Through the agency of metropolitan friends he 
has obtained a place in a store or a bank. That morning, 
in the farm house, the lights are kindled very early, and 
the boy's trunk is on the wagon. " I put a Bible in 
your trunk," says the mother, as she wipes the tears 
away with her apron. " My dear, I want you to read it 
when you get to town." "O," he says, " mother, don't 
you be worried about me. I know what I am about. I 
am old enough to take care of myself. Don't yon be 
worried about me." The father says: "Be a good boy 
and write home oftcF. Your ro.other will want to hear 



POISON IN THE OALDBON. 



149 



from you." Crack I goes the whip, and away over the 
hills goes the wagon. The scene changes. Five years 
after and there is a hearse coming up the old lane in 
front of the farm house. Killed in a porter house fight, 
that son has come home to disgrace the sepulchre of his 
fathers. When the old people lift the coffin lid, and see 
the changed face, and see the gash in the temples where 
the life oozed out, they will wring their withered hands 
and look up to heaven and cry: Cursed hervm! Cubsed 
BE etjm!" 

Lorenzo de Medici was sick, and his friends thought 
that if they could dissolve some pearls In his cup, and 
then get him to swallow them, he would be cured. And 
so these valuable pearls were dissolved in his cup, and he 
drank them. What an expensive draught I But do you 
know that drunkenness puts into its cup the pearl of 
physical health, the pearl of domestic happiness, the 
pearl of earthly usefulness, the pearl of Christian hope, 
the pearl of an everlasting heaven, and then presses it to 
the lips? And oh, what an expensive draught! The 
dram shop is the gate of hell. While I speak there are 
some of you in the outer circles of this terrible mael- 
strom, and in the name of God I cry the alarm: "Put 
back now or never!" You say you are kind, and genial^ 
and generous. I do not doubt it; but so much more the 
peril. Mean men never drink, unless some one else 
treats them. But the men who are in the front rank of 
this destructive habit are those who have a fijie educa- 
tion, large hearts, genial natures and splendid prospects. 
This sin chooses the fattest lambs for sacrifice. What 
garlands of victory this carbuncled hand of drunkenness 
hath snatched from the brow of the orator and poet. 
What gleaming lights of generosity it has put out in 
midnight darkness. Come with me and look over — 



I 



150 



POISON IN THE OALDRON. 



come and hang over — look down into it while I lift off 
the cover, and you may see the loathsome, boiling seeth- 
ing, groaning, agonizing, blaspheming hell of the drunk- 
^ird. There is everlasting death in the pot. 

I have thought it might be appropriate at this season 
of the year, when we all mingle in hilarities, to warn our 
young friends not to put the cup of intoxication to their 
lips, and not to make these glorious seasons of family 
reunion and neighborhood congratulation the beginning 
of a long road of dissipation and sorrow. Young man I 
by the grace of God, be master of your appetites and 
passions. Frederick the Great, before he became "the 
Great," was seated with his roystering companions, and 
they were drinking, and hallooing, and almost imbecile, 
when word came to him that his father was dead, and 
consequently the crown was to pass to him. He rose up 
from* among the boisterous crew, and stepped out and 
cried: "Stop your fooling; I am emperor!'' Would to 
God that this day you might bring all your appetites 
and all your passions in subjection. "Better is he that 
ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." Be emperor I 
Yea, you are called this morning to be kings and to be 
priests unto God for ever. In the solemn hours of this 
closing year, and about to enter upon another year, if the 
Lord shall spare your lives for a few days longer, resolve 
that you will serve Him. Soon all the days and years 
of your life will have passed away, and then, the great 
eternity. "Kejoice, O, young man, in thy youth; let 
thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk 
thou in the sight of thine own eyes, and in the way of 
thine own heart; but know thou that for all these things 
God will bring thee into judgment" 



f 



▲ OABT-BOPB INIQUITY, 



161 



CHAPTER X. 

A CART-ROPE INIQUITT 

•*Woe unto them that ain as it were with a cart-rope."— Isaiah 18. 

There are some iniquities that only nibble at the heart 
After a lifetime of their work, the man still stands up- 
right, respected and honored. These vermin have not 
strength enough to gnaw through a man's character. 
But there are other transgressions that lift themselves 
up to gigantic proportions, and seize hold of a man and 
bind him with thongs for ever. There are some iniqui- 
ties that have such great emphasis of evil that he who com- 
mits them may be said to sin as with a cart-rope. I suppose 
you know how they make a great rope. The stuff out of 
which it is fashioned is nothing but tow which you pull 
apart without any exertion of your fingers. This is spun 
into threads, any one of which you could easily snap, 
but a great many of these threads are interwound — then 
you have a rope strong enough to bind an ox, or hold a 
ship in a tempest. I speak to you of the sin of gambling. 
A cart-rope in strength is that sin, and yet I wish more 
especially to draw your attention to the small threads of 
influence out of which that mighty iniquity is twisted. 
This crime is on the advance, so that it is well not only 
that fathers, and brothers, and sons, be interested in such 
a discussion, but that wives, and mothers, and sisters, and 
daughters look out lest their present home be sacrificed, 
or their intended home be blasted. No man, no woman, 
can stand aloof from such a subject as this and say: "It 
has no practical bearing upon my life;" for there may be 



153 



▲ OABT-EOPE INIQUnr. 



in a short time in your history an experience in which 
yon will find that the discussion involved three worlds — 
earth, heaven, hell. There are in this cluster of cities 
about eight hundred confessed gambling establishments. 
There are about three thousand five hundred professional 
gamblers. Out of the eight hundred gambling establish- 
ments, how many of them do you suppose profess to be 
honest? Ten. These ten professing to be honest because 
they are merely the ante-chamber to the seven hundred 
and ninety that are acknowledged fraudulent. There are 
first-class gambling establishments. You step a little 
way out of Broadway. You go up the marble stairs. 
You ring the bell. The liveried servant introduces you. 
The walls are lavendar tinted. The mantles are of Ver- 
mont marble. The pictures are " Jephtha's Daughter," 
and Dore's " Dante's and Yirgil's Frozen Kegion of 
Hell," a most appropriate selection, this last, for the place. 
There is the roulette table, the finest, costliest, most ex- 
quisite piece of furniture in the United States. There 
is the banqueting-room where, free of charge to the 
guests, you may find the plate, and viands, and wine^ 
and cigars, sumptuous beyond parallel. Then you come 
to the second-class gambling-establishment. To it you 
are introduced by a card through some "roper in." 
Having entered, you must either gamble or fight. Sand- 
ed cards, dice loaded with quicksilver, poor drinks mixed 
with more poor drinks, will soon help you to get rid of 
all yo-ir money to a tune in short metre without staccato 
passages. You wanted to see. You saw. The low vil- 
lains of that place watch you as you come in. Does not 
the panther, squat in the grass, know a calf when he sees 
it ! Wrangle not for your rights in that place, or your 
body will be thrown bloody into the street, or dead into 
the East Kiver. 



▲ CART-KOPE INIQUITY. 



158 



You go along a little further and find the policy estab- 
lishment. In that place you bet on numbers. Betting 
on two numbers is called a " saddle;" betting on three 
numbers is called a "gig;" betting on four numbers is 
called a "horse;" and there are thousands of our young 
men leaping into that "saddle," .and mounting that 
"gig," and behind that "horse," riding to perdition. 
There is always one kind of sign on the door — Ex- 
change; " a most appropriate title for the door, for there, 
in that room, a man exchanges health, peace, and heaven, 
for loss of health, loss of home, loss of family, loss of im- 
mortal soul. Exchange sure enough and infinite enough. 

Now you acknowledge that is a cart-rope of evil, but 
you want to know what are the small threads out of which 
/ it is made. There is, in many, a disposition to hazard. 
They feel a delight in walking near a precipice because 
of the sense of danger. There are people who go upon 
Jungfrau, not for the largeness of the prospect, but for the 
feeling that they have of thinking: "What would hap- 
pen if I should fall ofi"? " There are persons who have 
their blood filliped and accelerated by skating very near 
an air hole. There are men who find a positive delight 
in driving within two inches of the edge of a bridge. It 
is this disposition to hazard that finds development in 
gaming practices. Here are five hundred dollars. I may 
stake them. If I stake them I may lose them; but I 
may win five thousand dollars. Whichever way it turns, 
I have the excitement. Shuffle the cards. Lost I Heart 
thumps. Head dizzy. At it again — just to gratify this 
desire for hazard. 

Then there are others who go into this sin through 
%heeT desire for gain. It is especially so with profes- 
sional gamblers. They always keep cool. They never 
drink enough to unbalance their judgment. They do not 



154 



A OABT-JROPE INIQUITY. 



see the dice so much as thej see the dollar beyond the 
dice, and for that they watch as the spider in the web, 
looking as if dead until the fly passes. Thousands of 
young men in the hope of gain go into these practices. 
They say: "Well, my salary is not enough to allow this 
luxuriance. I don't get enough from my store, office, or 
shop. I ought to have finer apartments. I ought to have 
better wines. I ought to have more richly flavored 
cigars. I ought to be able to entertain my friends more 
expensively. I wont stand this any longer. I can with 
one brilliant stroke make a fortune. Now, here goes, 
principle or no principle, heaven or hell. Who cares?" 
When a yoang man makes up his mind to live beyond 
his income, Satan has bought him out and out, and it is 
only a question of time when the goods are to be deliv-, 
ered. The thing is done. You may plant in the way all 
the batteries of truth and righteousness, that man is bound 
to go on. When a man makes one thousand dollars a 
year and spends one thousand two hundred dollars ; when 
a young man makes one thousand five hundred dollars 
and spends one thousand seven hundred dollars, all the 
harpies of darkness cry out: *'IIa! ha I we have him," 
and they have. How to get the extra five hundred dol- 
lars or the extra two thousand dollars is the question. 
He says: " Here is my friend who started out the other 
day with but little money, and in one night, so great was 
his luck, he rolled up hundreds and thousands of dollars. 
If he got it, why not I? It is such dull work, this adding 
up of long lines of figures in the counting-house; this 
pulling down of a hundred yards of goods and selling a 
remnant; this always waiting upon somebody else, when 
I could put one hundred dollars on the ace, and pick up 
a thousand." This sin works very insidiously. 

Other sins sound the drum, and flaunt the flag, and 



A CART- ROPE INIQUITY. 



155 



gather their recruits with wild huzza, but this marches 
its procession of pale victims in dead of night, in silence, 
and when thej drop into the grave there is not so much 
sound as the click of a dice. O, how many have gone 
down under it. Look at those men who were once highly 
prospered. !Now, their forehead is licked by a tongue of 
flame that will never go out. In their souls are plunged 
the beaks that will never be lifted. Swing open the door 
of that man's heart and you see a coil of adders wrig- 
gling their indescribable horror until you turn away 
and hide your face and ask God to help you to forget it. 
The most of this evil is unadvertised. The community 
does not hear of it. Men defrauded in gaming establish- 
ments are not fools enough to tell of it. Once in a while, 
however, there is an exposure, as when in Boston the 
police swooped upon a gaming establishment and found 
in it the representatives of all classes of citizens, from the 
first merchants on State street to the low Ann street 
gambler ; as when Bullock, the cashier of the Central 
Railroad of Georgia, was found to have stolen one hun- 
dred and three thousand dollars for the purpose of carry- 
ing on gaming practices ; as when a young man in one 
of the savings' banks of Brooklyn, many years ago, was 
found to have stolen forty thousand dollars to carry on 
gaming practices; as when a man connected with a Wall 
street insurance company was found to have stolen one 
hundred and eighty thousand dollars to carry on his gam- 
ing practices. But that is exceptional. Generally the 
money leaks silently from the merchant's till into the 
gamester's wallet. I believe that one of the main pipes 
leading to this sewer of iniquity is the excitement of busi- 
ness life. It is not a significant fact that the majority of 
the day gambling-houses in ^Tew York are in proximity 
to Wall street! Men go into the excitement of stock 



156 



▲ OABT-BOPB INIQUITY. 



gambling, and from that thej plunge into the gam- 
bling-houses, as, when men are intoxicated, they go into 
a liquor saloon to get more drink. The howling, scream- 
ing, stamping, Bedlamitish crew in the " Gold Room" 
dr#p into the gaming-houses to keep up their frenzy. The 
agitation that is witnessed in the stock market when the 
chair announces the word " North-western," or " Fort 
Wayne," or " Eock Island," or " New York Central," 
and the rat! tat! tat! of the auctioneer's hammer, and the 
excitement of making "corners," and getting up "pools," 
and "carrying stock," and a "break" from eighty to 
seventy, and the excitement of rushing about in curb- 
stone brokerage, and the sudden cries of "Buyer three! " 
"Buyer ten!" "Take 'em!" "How many?" and the 
making or losing of ten thousand dollars by one opera- 
tion, unfits a man to go home, and so he goes up the 
flight of stairs, amid business offices, to the darkly-cur- 
tained, wooden -shuttered room, gaily furnished inside, 
and takes his place at the roulette or the faro table. But 
I cannot tell all the process by which men get into this 
evil. One man came to our city of New York. He was 
a Western merchant. He went into a gaming-house on 
Park-place. Before morning he had lost all his money 
save one dollar, and he moved around about with tliat 
dollar in his hand, and after awhile, caught still more 
powerfully under the infernal infatuation, he came up and 
put down the dollar and cried out until they heard him 
through the saloon: "One thousand miles from home, 
and my last dollar on the gaming table." 

Says some young man here this morning: " That cart- 
rope has never been wound around my soul." My 
brother, have not some threads of that cart-rope been 
twisted until after awhile they may become strong enough 
to bind you for ever! 



A OAET-BOPB INIQUITY. 



157 



I arraign before God the gift enterprises of our cities, 
which have a tendency to make this a nation of gam- 
blers. Whatever you get, young man, in such a place 
as that, without giving a proper equivalent, is a robbery 
of your own soul, and a rolJbery of the community. 
Yet, how we are appalled to see men who have failed in 
other enterprises go into gift concerts, where the chief 
attraction is not music, but the prizes distributed among 
the audience; or to sell books where the chief attraction 
is not the book, but the package that goes with the book. 
Tobacco dealers advertise that on a certain day they will 
put money into their papers, so that the purchaser of 
this tobacco in Cincini^ati or Kew York may unexpect- 
edly come upon a magnificent gratuity. Boys hawking 
through the cars packages containing nobody knows 
what, until you open them and find they contain noth- 
ing. Christian men with pictures on their wall gotten 
in a lottery, and the brain of community taxed to find 
out some new way of getting things without paying for 
them. O, young men, these are the threads that make 
the cart rope, and when a young man consents to these 
practices, he is being bound hand and foot by a habit 
which has already destroyed a great multitude that no 
man can number." Sometimes these gift enterprises 
are carried on in the name of charity; and you remem- 
ber at the close of the late war how many gift enter- 
prises were on foot, the proceeds to go to the orphans 
and the widows of the soldiers and sailors. What did 
the men who had charge of those gift enterprises care 
for the orphans and the widows? Why, they would have 
allowed them to freeze to death upon their steps. I have 
no faith in a charity which, for the sake of relieving 
present suffering, opens a gaping jaw that has swallowed 
down BO much of the virtue and good principle of com- 



168 



A CART-ROPE INIQUITY. 



munity. Young man, have nothing to do with these 
things. They only sharpen your appetite for games of 
chance. Do one of two things: be honest or die. 

I have accomplished my object if I put the men in my 
audience on the look out. It is a great deal easier to 
fall than it is to get up a^aiu. The trouble is that when 
men begin to go astray from the path of duty, they are 
apt to say, " There's no use of my trying to get back. 
IVe sacrificed my respectability, I can't return;" and 
they go on until they are utterly destroyed. I tell you, 
my friends, that God this moment, by His Holy Spirit, 
can change your entire nature, so that you will go out 
of this Tabernacle a far different man from what you 
were when you came in. Your great want — what is it? 
More salary? Higher social position? No; no. I will 
tell you the great want of every man in this house, if 
he has not already obtained it. It is the grace of God. 
Are there any here who have fallen victims to the sin 
that I have been reprehending? You are in a prison. 
You rush against the wall of this prison, and try to get 
out, and you fail; and you turn around and dash against 
the other wall until there is blood on the grates, and 
blood on your soul. You will never get out in this way. 
There is only one way of getting out. There is a key 
that can unlock that prison-house. It is the key of the 
house of David. It is the key that Christ wears at His 
girdle. If you will allow Him this morning to put that 
key to the lock, the bolt will shoot back, and the door 
will swing open, and you will be a free man in Christ 
Jesus. O, prodigal, what a business this is for you, 
feeding swine, when your father stands in the front door, 
straining his eyesight to catch the first glimpse of your 
return ; and the calf is as fat as it will be, and the harps 
of heaven are all strung, and the feet free. There are 



A OABT-BOPB INIQUITY. 



159 



converted gamblers in heaven. The light of eternity 
flashed upon the green baize of their billiard-saloon. In 
the laver of God's forgiveness they washed off all their 
sin. They quit trying for earthly stakes. They tried 
for heaven and won it. There stretches a hand from 
heaven toward the head of the worst man in all this 
audience. It is a hand, not clenched as if to smite, but 
outspread as if to drop a benediction. Other seas have 
a shore and may be fathomed, but the sea of &od's love 
— eternity, has no plummet to strike the bottom, and 
immensity no iron-bound shore to confine it. Its tides 
are lifted by the heart of infinite compassion. Its waves 
are the hosannahs^of the redeemed. The argosies that 
sail on it drop anchor at last amid the thundering salvo 
of eternal victory. But alas for that man who sits down 
to the final game of life and puts his immortal soul on 
the ace, while the angels of God keep the tally-board ; 
and after the kings and queens, and knaves, and spades, 
are " shuffled " and "cut," and the game is ended, hov- 
ering and impending worlds discover that he has lost it, 
the faro-bank of eternal darkness clutching down into 
its wallet all the blood-stained wagera. 



160 



THE WOMAN OF PLSABUBB. 



CHAPTEE XL 

THE WOMAN OP PLEASURE. 
She that liveth In pleasure is dead while she liveth.— I. TiiiL t: 

It is a strong way of putting the truth, that a woman 
who seeks in worldly advantage her chief enjoyment, 
will come to disappointment and death. 

My friends, you all want to be happy. You hare had 
a great many recipes by which it is proposed to give you 
satisfaction — solid satisfaction. At times you feel a 
thorough unrest. You know as well as older people 
what it is to be depressed. As dark shadows sometimes 
fall upon the geography of the school-girl as on the page 
of the spectacled philosopher. I have seen as cloudy 
days in May as in November. There are no deeper sighs 
breathed by the grandmother than by the granddaughter. 
I correct the popular impression that people are happier 
in childhood and youth than they ever will be again. If 
we live aright, the older we are the happier. The happiest 
woman that I ever knew was a Christian octogenarian; 
her hair white as white could be; the sunlight of heaven 
late in the afternoon gilding the peaks of snow. I have 
to say to a great many of the young people of this church 
that the most miserable time you are ever to have is 
just now. As you advance in life, as you come out into 
the world and have your head and heart all full of good, 
honest, practical, Christian work, then you will know 
w)^at \t is to begin to be happy. There are those who 
would have us believe that life is chasing thistle-dowo 



THB WOMAN OF PLEASUSBL 



161 



and grasping bubbles. We have not found it bo. To 
many of us it has been discovering diamonds larger than 
the Kohinoor, and I think that our joy will continue to 
increase until nothing short of the everlasting jubilee of 
heaven will be able to express it 

Horatio Greenough, at the close of the hardest life a 
man ever lives— the life of an American artist — wrote: 
"I don't want to leave this world untjl I give some sign 
that, born by the grace of God in this land, I have found 
life to be a very cheerful thing, and not the dark and 
bitter thing with which my early prospects were 
clouded." 

Albert Barnes, the good Christian, known the world 
over, stood in his pulpit in Philadelphia, at seventy or 
eighty years of age, and said: "This world is so very 
attractive to me, I am very sorry I shall have to leave it." 

I know that Solomon said some very dolorous things 
about this world, and three times declared: "Yanity of 
vanities, all is vanity." I suppose it was a reference to 
those times in his career when his seven hundred wives 
almost pestered the life out of him I But I would ratlier 
turn to the description he has given of religion, when he 
says in another place: "Her ways are ways of pleasant- 
ness, and all her paths are peace." It is reasonable 
to expect it will be so. The longer the fruit hangs on 
the tree, the riper and more mellow it ought to gro^. 
You plant one grain of corn, and it will send up a stalk 
with two ears, each having nine hundred and fifty grains, 
so that, one grain planted will produce nineteen hundred 
grains. And ought not the implantation of a grain ot 
Christian principle in a youthful soul develop into a large 
crop of gladness on earth and to a harvest of eternal joy 
in heaven? Hear me, then, this morning, while I dis- 
course upon some of the mistakes which young people 
11 



THE WOMAN OF PLBASUBS. 



make in regard to happiness, and point out to the youa^ 
women of this church what I consider to be the sources 
of complete satisfaction. 

And, in the first place, I advise you not to build your 
happiness upon mere social position. Persons at your 
age, looking off upon life, are apt to think that if, by 
some stroke of what is called good-luck, you could arrive 
in an elevated and affluent position, a little higher than 
that in which God has called you to live, you would be 
completely happy. Infinite mistake! The palace floor 
of Ahasuerus is red with the blood of Yashti's broken 
heart. There have been no more scalding tears wept 
than those which coursed the cheeks of Josephine. If 
the sobs of unhappy womanhood in the great cities could 
break through the tapestried wall, that sob would come 
along your streets to-day like the simoon of the desert. 
Sometimes I have heard in the rustling of the robes on 
the city pavement the hiss of the adders that followed in 
the wake. You have come out from your home, and you 
have looked up at the great house, and covet a life under 
those arches, when, perhaps, at that very moment, within 
that house, there may have been the wringing of hands, 
the start of horror, and the very agony of helL I knew 
such an one. Her father's house was plain, most of the 
people who came there were plain; but, by a change in 
fortune such as sometimes comes, a hand had been 
offered that led her into a brilliant sphere. All the 
neighbors congratulated her upon her grand prospects; 
but what an exchangel On her side it was a heart full 
of generous impulse and affection. On his side it was a 
soul dry and withered as the stubble of the field. On 
her side it was a father's house, where God was honored 
and the Sabbath light flooded the rooms with the very 
mirth of heaven. On his side it was a gorgeous reei- 



THE WOMAN OF PLEAStJSE. 



168 



deuce, and the coming of mighty men to be entertained 
there; but within it were revelry and godlessness. 
Hardly had the orange blossoms of the marriage feast 
lost their fragrance, than the night of discontent began 
be cast here and there its shadow. The ring on the fin- 
ger was only one link of an iron chain that was to bind 
her eternally captive. Cruelties and unkindness changed 
all those splendid trappings into a hollow mockery. The 
platters of solid silver, the caskets of pure gold, thehe^d- 
dress of gleaming diamonds, were there; but no God, no 
peace, no kind words, no Christian sympathy. The festive 
music that broke on the captive's ear turned out to be a 
dirge, and the wreath in the plush was a reptile coil, and 
the upholstery that swayed in the wind was the wing of 
a destroying angel, and the bead-drops on the pitcher 
were the sweat of everlasting despair. O, how many 
rivalries and unhappinesses among those who seek in 
social life their chief happiness I It matters not how fine 
you have things; "there are other people who have it 
finer. Taking out your watch to tell the hour of day, 
some one will correct your time-piece by pulling out a 
watch more richly chased and jeweled. Ride in a car 
riage that cost you eight hundred dollars, and before you 
get around the park you will meet with one that cost two 
thousand dollars. Have on your wall a picture by Cop* 
ley, and before night you will hear of some one who has 
a picture fresh from the studio of Church or Bierstadt 
All that this world can d* for you in ribbons, in silver, 
in gold, in Axminster plush, in Gobelin tapestry, in wide 
halls, in lordly acquaintanceship, will not give you the 
ten-thousandth part of a grain of solid satisfaction. The 
English lord, moving in the very highest sphere, was! 
one day found seated, with his chin on his hand, and his 
elbow on the wWidow-sill, looking out, and saying: "O, 



164 



THE W0MA17 OF PLEASTJBB. 



I wish I could exchange places with that dog." Mere 
social poisition will never give happiness to a woman's 
soul. I have walked through the halls of those who des- 
pise the common people; I have sat at their banquets; 
I have had their friendship; yea, I have heard from their 
own lips the story of their disquietude; and I tell the 
young women of this church that they who build on 
mere social position their souPs immortal happiness, are 
building on the sand. 

1 go further, and advise you not to depend for enjoy- 
ment upon mere personal attractions. It would be 
sheer hypocrisy, because we may not have it ourselves, 
to despise, or affect to despise, beauty in others. When 
God gives it. He gives it as a blessing and as a means of 
usefulness. David and his army were coming down from 
the mountains to destroy Nabal and his flocks and vine- 
yards. The beautiful Abigail, the wife of Nabal, went 
out to arrest him when he came down from the moun- 
tains, and she succeeded. Coming to the foot of the hill, 
she knelt. David with his army of sworn men came 
down over the cliffs, and when he saw her kneeling at 
the foot of the hill, he cried: "Halt!" to his men, and 
the caves echoed it: "Haiti halt I" That one beautiful 
woman kneeling at the foot of the cliff had arrested all 
those armed troops. A dew-drop dashed back Niagara. 
The Bible sets before us the portraits of Sarah and 
Rebecca, and Abishag, Absalom's sister, and Job's 
daughters, and says: "They were fair to look upon." 
By out-door exercise, and by skillful arrangement of ap- 
parel, let women make themselves attractive. The sloven 
has only one mission, and that to excite our loathing and 
disgust. But alas! for those who depend upon personal 
charms for their happiness. Beauty is such a subtle 
thing, it does not seem to depend upon facial propor- 



THB WOMAN OF PLEASURE. 166 

tions, or upon the sparkle of the eye, or upon the flush 
of the cheek. You sometimes find it among irregular 
features. It is the soul shining through the face that 
makes one beautiful. But alas I for those who depend 
upon mere personal charms. They will come to disap- 
pointment and to a great fret. There are so many dif- 
ferent opinions about what are personal charms; and then 
sickness, and trouble, and age, do make such ravages. 
The poorest god that a woman ever worships is her own 
face. The saddest sight in all the world is a woman who 
has built everything on good looks, when the charms 
begin to vanish. O, how they try to cover the wrinkles 
and hide the ravages of time! When Time, with iron- 
shod feet, steps on a face, the hoof-marks remain, and 
you cannot hide them. It is silly to try to hide them. 
I think the most repulsive fool in all the world is an old 
fool I 

"Why, my friends, should you be ashamed to be get- 
ting old? It is a sign — it is prima facie evidence, that 
you have behaved tolerably well or you would not have 
lived to this time. The grandest thing, I think, is eter- 
nity, and that is made up of countless years. When the 
Bible would set forth the attractiveness of Jesus Christ, 
it says: "His hair was white as snow." But when the 
color goes from the cheek, and the lustre from the eye, 
and the spring from the step, and the gracefulness from 
the gait, alasl for those who have built their time and 
their eternity upon good looks. But all the passage of 
years cannot take out of one's face benignity, and kind- 
ness, and compassion, and faith. Culture your heart and 
you culture your face. The brightest glory that ever 
beamed from a woman's face is the religion of Jesus 
Christ. In the last war two hundred wounded soldiers 
piirae to Philadelphia one night, and came unheralded^ 



166 



THE WOMAN OF PLEASUBK. 



and thej had to extemporize a hospital for them, and the 
Christian women of my church, and of other churches, 
went out that night to take care of the poor wounded 
fellows. That night I saw a Christian woman go through 
the wards of the hospital, her sleeves rolled up, ready for 
hard work, her hair dishevelled in the excitement of the 
hour. Her face waS plain, very plain; but after the 
wounds were washed and the new bandages were put 
round the splintered limbs, and the exhausted boy fell 
off into his first pleasant sleep, she put her hand on his 
brow, and he started in his dream, and said: -^O, I 
thought an angel touched rae!" There may have been 
no classic elegance in the features of Mrs. Harris, who 
came into the hospital after the "Seven Days*' awful fight 
before Richmond, as she sat down by a wounded drum- 
mer-boy and heard him soliloquize: "A ball through 
my body, and my poor mother will never again see hei 
boy. What a pity it is I" And she leaned over him and 
said: "Shall I be your mother, and comfort you?" And 
he looked up and said: "Yes, I'll try to think she's 
here. Please to write a long letter to her, and tell her 
all about it, and send her a lock of my hair and comfort 
her. But I would like to have you tell her how much I 
suffered — yes, I would like you to do that, for she would 
feel so for me. Hold my hand while I die." There may 
have been no classic elegance in her features, but all the 
hospitals of Harrison's Landing and Fortress Monroe 
would have agreed that she was beautiful; and if any 
rough man in all that ward had insulted her, some 
wounded soldier would have leaped from his couch, on 
his best foot, and struck him dead with a crutch. 

Again: I advise you not to depend for happine99 
upon the flatteries of men. It is a poor compliment tc 
your sex that so many men feel obliged in your presence 



THE WOMAN OF PLEASUKE. 



167 



to offer unmeaning compliments. Men capable of ele- 
gant and elaborate conversation elsewhere sometimes feel 
called upon at the door of the drawing-room to drop their 
common sense and to dole out sickening flatteries. They 
say things about your dress, and about your appearance, 
that you know, and they know, are false. They say you 
are an angel. You know you are not. Determined to 
tell the truth in office, and store, and shop, they consider 
it honorable to lie to a woman. The same thing that 
they told you on this side of the drawing-room, three 
minutes ago they said to some on the other side of the 
drawing-room. O, let no one traipple on your self-res- 
pect. The meanest thing on which a woman can build 
her happiness is the flatteries of men. 

Again: I charge you not to depend for happiness 
upon the disoipleship of fashion. Some men are just as 
proud of being out of the fashion as others are of being 
in it. I have seen men as vain of their old fashioned 
coat, and their eccentric hat, as your brainless fop is proud 
of his dangling fooleries. Fashion sometimes makes a 
reasonable demand of us, and then we ought to yield to it. 
The daisies of tlie field have their fashion of color and 
leaf; the honeysuckles have their fashion of ear-drop; 
and the snowflakes flung out of the winter heavens have 
their fashion of exquisiteness. After the summer shower 
the sky weds the earth with ring of rainbow. And I do 
not think we have a right to despise all the elegancies and 
fashions of this world, especially if they make reasonable 
demands upon us; but the discipleship and worship of fash, 
ion is death to the body, and death to the soul. I am glad 
the world is improving. Look at the fashion plates of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and you will find 
that the world is not so extravagant ai^d extraordinary now 
as it was then, and all the marvellous things that the 



168 



THE WOMAN OF PLEASUSB. 



granddaughter will do will never equal that done by the 
grandmother. Go still further back to the Bible times, 
and you find that in those times fashion wielded a more 
terrible scepter. You have only to turn to the third 
chapter of Isaiah. 

Only think of a woman having all that on! I am glad 
that the world is getting better, and that fashion which 
has dominated in the world so ruinously in other days 
has for a little time, for a little degree at any rate, re- 
laxed its energies. Oh, the danger of the discipleship of 
fashion. All the splendors and the extravaganza of this 
world dyed into your robe and flung over your shoulder 
cannot wrap peace around your heart for a single moment 
The gayest wardrobe will utter no voice of condolence in 
the day of trouble and darkness. That woman is grand- 
ly dressed, and only she, who is wrapped in the robe of a 
Savior's righteousness. The home may be very hum- 
ble, the hat may be very plain, the frock may be very 
coarse; but the halo of heaven settles in the room when 
she wears it, and the faintest touch of the resurrection 
angel will change that garment into raiment exceeding 
white, so as no fuller on earth could whiten it. I come 
to you, young woman, to-day, to say that this world can- 
not make you happy. I know it is a bright world, with 
glorious sunshine, and golden rivers, and fire-worked 
sunset, and bird orchestra, and the darkest cave has its 
crystals, and the wrathiest wave its foam-wreath, and the 
coldest midnight its flaming aurora; but God will put 
out all these lights with the blast of his own nostrils, and 
the glories of this world will perish in the final confla- 
gration. You will never be happy until you get your 
sins forgiven and allow Christ Jesus to take full posses- 
sion of your soul. 'He will be your friend in every per- 
plexity. He will be your comfort in every trial. He 



THE WOMAN OF PLEASUfiB. 



169 



will be your defender in every strait. I do not ask you 
to bring, like Mary, the spices to the sepulcher of a dead 
Christ, but to bring your all to the feet of a living Jesus. 
His word is peace. His look is love. His hand is help. 
His touch is life. His smile is heaven. Oh, come, then, 
in flocks and groups! Come, like the south wind over 
banks of myrrh. Come, like the morning light tripping 
over the mountains. Wreathe all your affections for 
Christ's brow, set all your gems in Christ's coronet, pour 
all your voices into Christ's song, and let this Sabbath 
air rustle with the wings of rejoicing angels, and the 
towers of God ring out the news of souls saved I 

"This world its fancied pearl may cravai 

'Tis not the pearl for me ; 
*Twill dim its luster in the grave 

*Twill perish in the sea. 
But there's a pearl of price untold, 
Which nerer can be bought with gold; 

Oh, that's the pearl for me." 



170 



WATESING PLAOB& 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SIKS OP SUMMER WATERING PLACES. 

A pool, which is called in the Hebrew tone:ue Bethesda, having 
five porches. In these lay a multitude, of blind, halt, withered, wait- 
ing for the moving of the water.— John v: 2, 3. 

Outside of the city of Jerusalem, there was a sensi- 
tive watering-place, the popular resort for invalids. To 
this day, there is a dry basin of rock which shows that 
there must have been a pool there three hundred and 
sixty feet long, one hundred and thirty feet wide, and 
seventy-five feet deep. This pool was surrounded by five 
piazzas, or porches, or bathing-houses, where the patients 
tarried until the time when they were to step into the 
water. So far as reinvigoration was concerned, it must 
have been a Saratoga and a Long Branch on a small scale; 
a Leamington and a Brighton combined — medical and 
therapeutic. Tradition says that at a certain season of 
the year there was an officer of the government who 
would go down to that water and pour in it some heal- 
ing quality, and after that the people would come and 
get the medication; but I prefer the plain statement of 
Scripture, that at a certain season, an angel came down 
and stirred up or troubled the water; and then the peo- 
ple came and got the healing. That angel of God that 
stirred up the J udean watering-place had his counter- 
part in the angel of healing that, in our day, steps into 
the mineral waters of Congress, or Sharon, or Sulphur 
Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape May and Nahant, 
where multitudes who are worn out with commercial and 



WATERING PLACES. 



ITI 



professional anxieties, as well as those who are afflicted 
with rheumatic, neuralgic, and splenetic diseases, go, 
and are cured by the thousands. These Bethesdas are 
scattered all up and down our country, blessed be God I 

We are at a season of the year when railway trains are 
being laden with passengers and baggage on their way to 
the mountains, and the lakes, and the sea-shore. Mul- 
titudes of our citizens are packing their trunks for a 
restorative absence. The city heats are pursuing the 
people with torch and fear of sunstroke. The long silent 
halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzz with excited ar- 
rivals. The crystalline surface of Winnipiseogee is shat- 
tered with the stroke of steamers laden with excursion- 
ists. The antlers of Adirondack Seer rattle under the 
shot of city sportsmen. The trout make fatal snap at 
the hook of adroit sportsmen, and toss their spotted bril- 
liance into the game basket. Soon the baton of the 
orchestral leader will tap the music-stand on the hotel 
green, and American life will put on festal array, and the 
rumbling of the tenpin alley, and the crack of the ivory 
balls on the green-baized billiard tables, and the jolting 
of the bar-room goblets, and the explosive uncorking of 
champagne bottles, and the whirl and the rustle of the 
ball-room dance, and the clattering hoofs of the race- 
courses, will attest that the season for the great Ameri- 
can watering-places is fairly inaugurated. Music I Flute, 
and drum, and cornet-a-piston, and clapping cymbals, 
will wake the echoes of the mountains. Glad I am that 
fagged-out American life, for the most part, will have an 
opportunity to rest, and that nerves racked and destroyed 
will find a Bethesda. 

I believe in watering-places. I go there sometimes. 
Let not the commercial firm begrudge the clerk, or the 
employer the journeyman, or the patient the physician, 



172 



WATEBING PLAOES. 



or the church its pastor, a season of inoccupation. Lu- 
ther used to sport with his children; Edmund Burke 
used to caress his favorite horse; Thomas Chalmers, in 
the dark hour of the Church's disruption, played kite 
for recreation — so I was told by his own daughter — and 
the busy Christ said to the busy apostles: "Come ye 
apart awhile into the desert, and rest yourselves." And 
I have observed that they who do not know how to rest, 
do not know how to work. 

But I have to declare this truth to-day, that some of 
our fashionable watering-places are the temporal and 
eternal destruction of "a multitude that no man can num- 
ber;" and amid the congratulations of this season, and 
the ^ospect of the departure of many of you for the 
country, I must utter a note of warning, plain, earnest, 
and unmistakable. The first temptation that is apt to 
hover in this direction, is to leave your piety all at home. 
You will send the dog, and cat, and canary-bird to be 
well cared for somewhere else; but the temptation will 
be to leave your religion in the room with the blinds 
down and the door bolted, and then you will come back 
in the autumn to find that it is starved and suiffocated, 
lying stretched on the rug, stark dead. There is no sur- 
plus of piety at the watering-places. I never knew any 
one to grow very rapidly in grace at the Catskill Moun- 
tain House, or Sharon Springs, or the Falls of Montmo- 
rency. It is generally the case that the Sabbath is more 
of a carousal than any other day, and there are Sunday 
walks, and Sunday rides, and Sunday excursions. 
Elders, and deacons, and ministers of religion, who are 
entirely consistent at home, sometimes when the Sab- 
bath dawns on them at Niagara Falls, or the "White 
Mountains, take the day to themselves. If they go to 
the church, it is apt to be a sacred parade, and 



WATERING PLACES. 



173 



the discourse, instead of being a plain talk about the 
soul, is apt to be what is called a crack sermon 
— that is, some discourse picked out of the effusions of 
the year as the one most adapted to excite admiration ; 
and in those churches, from the way the ladies hold their 
fans, you know that they are not so much impressed 
with the heat as with the picturesqueness of half die- 
closed features. Four puny souls stand in the organ lofi 
and squall a tune that nobody knows, and worshippers, 
with two thousand dollars worth of diamonds on the 
right hand, drop a cent into the poor-box, and then the 
benediction is pronounced, and the farce is ended. Thu 
toughest thing I ever tried to do was to be good at a 
watering.place. 

The air is bewitched with the "world, the flesh, and 
devil." There are Christians who, in three or four weeks 
in Buch a place, have had sijch terrible rents made in 
their Christian robe, that they had to keep darning it 
until Christmas to get it mended! The health of a great 
many people makes an annual visit to some mineral 
spring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take 
your Bible along with you, and take an hour for secret 
prayer every day, though you be surrounded by guffaw 
and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sabbath, though they 
deride you as a bigoted Puritan. Stand off from John 
Morrissey's gambling hell, and those other institutions 
which propose to imitate on this side the water the in- 
iquities of Baden-Baden. Let your moral and your im- 
mortal health keer pace with your physical recuperation 
and remember that all the waters of Hathorne, and sul- 
phur and chalybeate springs cannot do y':'U bo much 
good as the mineral, healing, perrennial flood that breaks 
forth from the "Kock of Ages." This may be your last 
■nmmer. If so, make it a fit vestibule of heaven. 



174 



WATERING PLAGES. 



Another temptation, however, around nearly all onr 
watering-places, is the horse-raci/ng htmneaa. We all 
admire the horse; but we do not think that its beauty, 
or speed, ought to be cultured at the expense of human 
degradation. The horse-race is not of such importance 
as the human race. The Bible intimates that a man is 
better than a sheep, and I suppose he is better than a 
horse, though, like Job's stallion, his neck be clothed with 
thunder. 

Horse-races in olden times were under the ban of 
Christian people; and in our day the same institution 
has come up under fictitious names. And it is called a 
**Summer Meeting," almost suggestive of positive relig- 
ious exercises. And it is called an "Agricultural Fair," 
suggestive of everything that is improving in the art of 
farming. But under these deceptive titles are the same 
cheating, and the same betting, and the same drunken- 
ness, and the same vagabondage, and the same abomina- 
tions that were to be found under the old horse-racing 
system. I never knew a man yet who could give him- 
self to the pleasures of the turf for a long reach of time 
and not be battered in morals. They hook up their 
spanking team, and put on their sporting cap, and light 
their cigar, and take the reins, and dash down the road 
to perdition I The great day at Saratoga and Long 
Branch, and Cape May, and nearly all the other water- 
ing-places, is the day of the races. The hotels are 
thronged, every kind of equipage is taken up at an 
almost fabulous price; and there are many respectable 
people mingling with jockies and gamblers, and liber- 
tines, and foul-mouthed men and flashy women. The 
bar-tender stirs up the brandy smash. The bets run 
high. The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their 
money, soon enough to lose it. Three weeks before 



WATERING PLAGES. 



1T6 



the race takes place the struggle is decided, and the men 
in the secret know on which steed to bet their money. 
The two men on the horses riding around, long before 
arranged who shall beat. Leaning from the stand or 
from the carriage, are men and women so absorbed in 
the struggle of bone and muscle, and mettle, that they 
make a grand harvest for the pickpockets who carry off 
the pocket-books and portmonnaies. Men looking on see 
only two horses with two riders flying around the ring; 
but there is many a man on that stand whose honor, and 
domestic happiness, and fortune — white mane, white 
foot, white flank — are in the ring, racing with in- 
ebriety, and with fraud, and with profanity, and with 
ruin — black neck, black foot, black flank. Neck and 
neck, they go in that moral Epsom. White horse of 
honor; black horse of ruin. l)eath says: "I will bet 
on the black horse." Spectator says: "I will bet on the 
white horse." The white horse of honor a little way 
ahead. The black horse of rmnj Satan mounted, all the 
time gaining on him. Spectator breathless. Put on the 
lash. Dig in the spurs. There I They are past the 
stand. Sure. Just as I expected it. The black horse 
of ruin has won the race, and all the galleries of dark- 
ness "huzza I huzza I" and the devils come in to pick up 
their wagers. Ah, my friends, have nothing to do with 
horse-racing dissipations this summer. Long ago the Eng- 
lish government got through looking to the turf for the 
dragoon and light c%valry horse. They found the turf de- 
preciates the stock; and it is yet worse for men. Thomas 
Hughes, the member of Parliament, and the author 
known all the world over, hearing that a new turf enter- 
prise was being started in this country, wrote a letter in 
which he said: "Heaven help you, then; for of all the 
cankers of our old civilization, there is nothing in this 



176 WATEEINO PLAOBS. 

country approaching in unblushing meanness, in rascality 
holding its head high, to this belauded institution of the 
British turf." Another famous sportsman writes: "How 
many fine domains have been shared among these hosts 
of rapacious sharks during the last two hundred years; 
and unless the system be altered, how many more are 
doomed to fall into the same gulf I" The Duke of Ham- 
ilton, through his horse-racing proclivities, in three 
years got through his entire fortune of £70,000; and I 
will say that some of you are being undermined by it. 
With the bull-fights of Spain and the bear-baitings of 
the pit, may the Lord God annihilate the infamous and 
accursed horse-racing of England and America. 

I go further and speak of another temptation that 
hovers over the watering place ; and this is the temptation 
to sacrifice physical strength. The modern Bethesda, 
just like this Bethesda of the text, was intended to re- 
cuperate the physical health; and yet how many come 
from the watering-places, their health absolutely de- 
stroyed. 

New York and Brooklyn idiots, boasting of having 
imbibed twenty glasses of congress water before break- 
fast. Families accustomed to going to bed at ten o'clock 
at night, gossiping until one or two o'clock in the morn- 
ing. Dyspeptics, usually very cautious about their 
health, mingling ice-creams, and lemons, and lobster- 
salads, and cocoanuts until the gastric juices lift up all 
their voices of lamentation and protest. Delicate women 
and brainless young men chassezing themselves into 
vertigo and catalepsy. Thousands of men and women 
coming back from our watering-places in the autumn 
with the foundations laid for ailments that will last them 
all their life long. You know as well as I do that this 
10 the simple truth. In the summer, you say to your 



WATERING PLACES. 



177 



good health: "Good- by; I am going to have a good time 
for a little while; I will be very glad to see yon again in 
the autumn.'* Then in the autumn, when you are hard 
at work in your office, or store, or shop, or counting- 
room, Good Health will come in and say: "Good-by; 1 
am going." You say: "Where are you going?" "O!" 
says Good Health, "I am going to take a vacation." It 
is a poor rule that will not work both ways, *and your 
good health will leave you choleric, and splenetic, and 
exhausted. You coquetted with your good health in the 
summer-time, and your good health is coquetting with 
you in the winter-time. A fragment of Paul's charge 
to the jailer would be an appropriate inscription for the 
hotel register in every watering-place: "Do thyself no 
harm." 

Another temptation hovering around the watering- 
place is to the formation of hasty and life-long alliances. 
The watering-places are responsible for more of the do- 
mestic infelicities of this country than all other things 
combined. Society is so artificial there that no sure 
judgment of character can be formed. They who form 
companionships amid such circumstances, go into a lot- 
tery where there are twenty blanks to one prize. In the 
severe tug of life you want more than glitter and splash. 
Life is not a ball-room, where the music decides the step, 
and bow, and prance, and graceful swing of long trail 
can make up for strong common sense. You might as 
well go among the gaily-painted yachts of a summer 
regatta to find war vessels, as to go among the light 
spray of the summer watering-place to find character 
that can stand the test of the great struggle of human 
life. Ah, in the battle of life you want a stronger weapon 
than a lace fan or a croquet mallet! The load of life is 
80 heavy that in order to draw it you want a team 
12 



178 



WATERING PLACES. 



stronger than one made up of a masculine grasshopper 
and a femmine butterfly. If there is any man in the 
community that excites my contempt, and that ought to 
excite the contempt of every man and woman, it is the 
soft-handed, soft-headed fop, who, perfumed until the 
air is actually sick, spends his summer in taking killing ' 
attitudes, and waving sentimental adieus, and talking 
infinitesimal nothings, and finding his heaven in the set 
of a lavender kid-glove. Boots as tight as an inquisition. 
Two hours of consummate skill exhibited in the tie of a 
flaming cravat. His conversation made up of "Ahs!" 
and "Ohs ! " and "He-hes ! " It would take five hundred 
of them stewed down to make a teaspoonful of calf's- 
foot jelly. There is only one counterpart to such a man 
as that, and that is the frothy young woman at the water- 
ing-place ; her conversation made up of French moon- # 
shine ; what she has on her head only equalled by what 
she has on her back ; useless ever since she was born, and 
to be useless until she is dead ; and what they will do 
with her in the next world I do not know, except to set 
her up on the banks of the Eiver of Life, for eternity, to 
look sweet ! God intends us to admire music, and fair 
faces and graceful step ; but amid the heartlessness, and 
the inflation and the fantastic influences of our modern 
watering-places, beware how you make life-long cove- 
nants. 

Another temptation that will hover over the watering- 
place is that to baneful literature. Almost every one 
starting off for the summer takes some reading matter. 
It is a book out of the library, or off the book-stand, or 
bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. I 
really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among 
the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the 
other ten months of the year. Men and women who at 



WATERING PLACES. 



home would not be satisfied with a book that was not 
really sensible, I found sitting on hotel piazza, or under 
the trees, reading books, the index of which would make 
them blush if they knew that you knew what the book 
was. "O," they say, "you must have intellectual recrea- 
tion." Yes. There is no need that you take along into 
a watering-place, "Hamilton's Metaphysics," or some 
thunderous discourse on the eternal decrees, or '^Fara- 
day's Philosophy." There are many easy books that are 
good. You might as well say : "I propose now to give 
a little rest to my digestive organs, and instead of eat- 
ing heavy meat and vegetables, I will, for a little while, 
take lighter food— a little strychnine and a few grains of, 
ratsbane." Literary poison in August is as bad as liter- 
ary poison in December. Mark that. Do not let the 
frogs and the lice of a corrupt printing-press jump and 
crawl into your Saratoga trunk or White Mountain va- 
lise. Would it not be an awful thing for you to be struck 
with lightning some day when you had in your hand one 
of these paper-covered romances — the hero a Parisian 
rovs, the heroine an unprincipled flirt — chapters in the 
book that you would not read to your children at the 
rate of a hundred dollars a line. Throw out all that stuff 
from your summer baggage. Are there not good books 
that are easy to read — books of entertaining travel; 
books of congenial history; books of pure fun; books of 
poetry, ringing with merry canto; books of fine engrav- 
ing; books that will rest the mind as well as purify the 
heart and elevate the whole life? My hearers, there will 
not be an hour between this and the day of your death 
when yon can afford to read a book lacking in moral 
principle. 

Another temptation hovering all around our watering- 
places, is to mtoxicatvng beverage, I am told that it i« 



180 



WATERING PLACES. 



becoming more and more fashionable for women to 
drink; and it is not very long ago that a ladj of great 
respectability, in this city, having taken two glasses of 
wine away from home, became violent, and her friends, 
ashamed, forsook her, anA she was carried to a police 
station, and afterward to her disgraced home. I care 
not how well a woman may dress, if she has taken enough 
of wine to flush her cheek and put a glassiness on her 
eye, she is intoxicated. She may be handed into a 2500 
dollar carriage, and have diamonds enough to confound 
the Tiffany's — she is intoxicated. She may be a gradu- 
ate of Packer Institute, and the daughter of some man 
in danger of being nominated for the Presidency — she 
is drunk. You may have a larger vocabulary than I 
have, and you may say in regard to her that she is "con- 
vivial," or she is "merry," or she is "festive," or she is 
"exhilarated;" but you cannot, with all your garlands of 
verbiage, cover up the plain fact that it is an old-fash- 
ioned case of drunk. Now the watering-places are full 
of temptations to men and women to tipple. A-t the 
close of the ten-pin or billiard game, they tipple. At 
the close of the cotillion, they tipple. Seated on the 
piazza cooling themselves off, they tipple. The tinged 
glasses come aronnd with bright straws, and they tipple. 
First, they take " light wines" as they call them; bu< 
"light wines," are heavy enough to debase the appetite. 
There is not a very long road between champagne at five 
dollars a bottle and whisky at five cents a glass. Satan 
has three or four grades down which he takes men tc 
destruction. One man he takes up, and through one 
spree pitches him into eternal darkness. That is a rare 
case. Yery seldom, indeed, can you find a man who 
will be such a fool as that. Satan will take another man 
to a grade, to a descent at an angle about like the Penn- 



WATERING PLAGES. 



181 



sylvania coal-sliute, or the Mount Washington lail track, * 
and shove him off. But that is very rare. "When a man 
goes down to destruction, Satan brings- him to a plane. 
It is almost a level. The depression is so slight that 
you can hardly see it. The man does not actually know 
that he is on the down grade, and it tips only a little 
toward darkness — just a little. And the first mile it is 
claret, and the second mile it is sherry, and the thftd 
mile it is punch, and the fourth mile it is ale, and the 
fifth mile it is porter, and the sixth mile it is brandy, 
and then it gets steeper, and steeper, and steeper, and 
the man gets frightened, and says: "O, let me get off.'* 
"No," says the conductor, "this is an express-train, and 
^ it don't stop until it gets to the Grand Central depot of 
SmashuptonI" Ah, "Look not thou upon the wine when 
it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it 
moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpentj 
and stingeth like an adder." And if any young man of 
my congregation should get astray this summer in this 
direction, it will not be because I have not given him 
fair warning. 

My friends, whether you tarry at home — which will be 
quite as safe and perhaps quite as comfortable — or go 
into the country, arm yourself against temptation. The 
grace of God is the only safe shelter, whether in town or 
country. There are watering-places accessible to all of 
us. You cannot open a book of the Bible without find- 
ing out some such watering-place. Fountains open for 
sin and uncleanness. Wells of salvation. Streams from 
Lebanon. A flood struck out of the rock by Moses. 
Fountains in the wilderness discovered by Hagar. Water 
to drink and water to bathe in. The river of God which 
is full of water. Water of which if a man drink, he 
shall never thirst. Wells of water in the Yalley of Baca. 



t82 



WATEBING PLACES. 



Living fonntains of water. A pure river of water as 
clear as crystal from under the throne of God. These 
are watering-places accessible to all of us. We do not 
have a laborious packing up before we start — only the 
throwing away of our transgressions. No expensive 
hotel bills to pay; it is "without money and without 
pjice." No long and dusty travel before we get there; 
it is only one step away. In California, in five minutes 
I walked around and saw ten fountains all bubbling up, 
and they were all different; and in five minutes I can go 
through this Bible parterre and find you fifty bright, 
sparkling fountains bubbling up into eternal life — heal- 
ing and therapeutic. A chemist will go to one of these 
summer watering-places and take the water, and analyze 
it, and tell you that it contains so much of iron, and so 
much of soda, and so much of lime, and so much of 
magnesia. I come to this Gospel well, this living foun- 
tain, and analyze the water; and I find that its ingredi- 
ents are peace, pardon, forgiveness, hope, comfort, life, 
heaven. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye" to this 
watering-place. Crowd around this Bethesda this morn- 
ing. O, you sick, you lame, you troubled, you dying — 
crowd around this Bethesda. Step in it, oh, step in it I 
The angel of the covenant this morning stirs the water I 
Why do you not step in it? Some of you are too weak 
to take a step in that direction. Then we take you up 
in the arms of our closing prayer, and plunge you clean 
under the wave, hoping that the cure may be as sudden 
and as radical as with Captain Naaman, who, blotched 
and carbuncled, stepped into the Jordan, and after the 
seventh dive came up, his skin roseate complexioned as 
the flesh of a little child. 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



183 



OHAPTEB XIIL 

THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 

He beheld the city, and wept over it — Luke xix: 41. 

The citizens of Old Jerusalem are in the tip- top of 
excitement. A country man has been doing some won- 
derful works and asserting very high authority. The 
police court has issued papers for his arrest, for this 
thing must be stopped, as the very government is im- 
perilled. News comes that last night this stranger 
arrived at a suburban village, and that he is stopping at 
the house of a man whom he had resuscitated after four 
days' sepulture. Well, the people rush out into the 
streets, some with the idea of helping in the arrest of 
this stranger when he arrives, and others expecting that 
on the morrow he will come into the town, and by some 
supernatural force oust the municipal and royal authori- 
ties and take everything in his own hands. They pour 
out of the city gates until the procession reaches to the 
village. They come all around about the house where the 
stranger is stopping, and peer into the doors and windows 
that they may get one glimpse of him or hear the hum of 
his voice. The police dare not make the arrest because he 
has, somehow, won the affections of all the people. O, 
it is a lively night in Bethany. The heretofore quiet 
village is filled with uproar, and outcry, and loud discus- 
sion about th^ strange acting countryman. I do not 
think there was any sleep in that house that night where 
the stranger was stopping. Although he came in weary 
he finds no rest, though for once in his lifetime he had 



184 



THE TIDES OF MTTNIOIPAL SIN. 



a pillow. But the morning dawns, the olive gardens 
wave in the light, and all along the road, reaching over 
the top of Olivet toward J erusalem, there is a vast sway- 
ing crowd of wondering people. The excitement around 
the door of the cottage is wild, as the stranger steps out 
beside an unbroken colt that had never been mounted, 
and after his friends had strewn their garments on the 
beast for a saddle, the Saviour mounts it, and the popu- 
lace, excited, and shouting, and feverish, push on back 
toward Jerusalem. Let none jeer now or scoff at this 
rider, or the populace will trample him under foot in an 
instant. There is one long shout of two miles, and as 
far as the eye can reach you see wavings of demonstra- 
tions and approval. There was something in the rider's 
visage, something in his majestic brow, something in 
his princely behavior, that stirs up the enthusiasm of 
the people. They run up against the beast and try to 
pull off into their arms, and carry on their shoulders, the 
illustrious stranger. The populace are so excited that 
they hardly know what to do with themselves, and some 
rush up to the roadside trees and wrench off branches 
and throw them in his way; and others doff their gar- 
ments, what though they be new and costly, and spread 
them for a carpet for the conqueror to' ride over. " Ho- 
sannal " cry the people at the foot of the hill. "Ho- 
sannal" cry the people all up and down the mountain. 
The procession has now come to the brow of Olivet. 
Magnificent prospect reaching out in every direction — 
vineyards, olive groves, jutting rock, silvery Siloam, and 
above all, rising on its throne of hills, the most highly 
honored city of all the earth, Jerusalem. Christ there, 
in the midst of the procession, looks off, and sees here 
fortressed gates, and yonder the circling wall, and here 
the towers blazing in the sun, Phasselus and Mariamne. 



THB TIDES OF MUNICIPAL BIN. 



186 



Yonder is Hippicus, the king's castle. Looking along 
in the range of the larger branch of that olive tree you 
see the mansions of the merchant princes. Through 
this cleft in the limestone rock you see the palace of the 
richest trafficker in all the earth. He has made his 
money by selling Tyrian purple. Behold now the Tem- 
ple! Clouds of smoke lifting from the shimmering 
roof, while the building rises up beautiful, grand, ma- 
jestic, the architectural skill and glory of the earth lift- 
ing themselves there in one triumphant doxology, the 
frozen prayer of all nations. 

The crowd looked around to see exhilaration and 
transport in the face of Christ. O, no! Out from amid 
the gates, and the domes, and the palaces there arose a 
vision ol that city's sin, and of that city's doom, which 
otiiterated the landscape from horizon to horizon, and 
he burst into tears. He beheld the city, and wept 
over it." 

Standing in some high tower of the beloved city ot 
our residence, we might look off upon a wondrous scene 
of enterprise, and wealth, and beauty ; long streets faced 
by comfortable homes, here and there rising into afflu- 
ence, while we might find thousands of people who 
would be glad to cast palm branches in the way of him 
who comes from Bethany to Jerusalem, greeting him 
with the vociferation: " Hosanna! to the Son of David." 
And yet how much there is to mourn over in our cities. 
Passing along the streets to-day are a great multitude. 
Whither do they go? To church. Thank God for 
that. Listen, this morning, and you hear multitudi- 
nous voices of praise. Thank God for that. When the 
evening falls you will find Christian men and women 
knocking at hovels of poverty, and finding no light, 
taking the matches from their pocket, and by a 



186 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL BIN. 



momentary glance revealing wan faces, and wasted 
hands, and ragged bed, sending in before morning, can- 
dles and vials of medicine, and Bibles and loaves of 
bread, and two or three flowers from the hot-house. 
Thank God for all that. But listen again, and you hear 
the thousand- voiced shriek of blasphemy tearing its way 
up from the depths of the city. You see the uplifted de- 
canters emptied now, but uplifted to fight down the 
devils they have raised. Listen to that wild laugh at 
the street corner, that makes the pure shudder and say: 
" Poor thing, that's a lost soul I" Hark I to the click ot 
the gambler's dice and the hysteric guffaw of him who 
has pocketed the last dollar of that young man's estate. 
This is the banquet of Bacchus. That young man has 
taken his first glass. That man has taken down three- 
fourths of his estate. This man is trembling with last 
night's debauch. This man has pawned everything save 
that old coat. This man is in delirium, sitting pale and 
unaware of anything that is transpiring about him — 
quiet until after awhile he rises up with a shriek, 
enough to make the denizens of the pit clap to the door 
and put their fingers in their ears, and rattle their 
chains still louder to drown out the horrible outcry. 
You say: " Is it not strange that there should be so 
much suffering and sin in our cities?" Ko, it is not 
strange. When I look abroad and see the temptations 
that are attempting to destroy men for time and eter- 
nity, I am surprised in the other direction that there are 
any true, upright, honest. Christian people left. There 
is but little hope for any man in these great cities who 
has not established in his soul, sound, thorough Chris- 
tian principle. 

First, look around you and see the temptations to 
commercial frauds. Here is a man who starts in busi- 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



187 



ness. He says: " Pm going to be honest;" but on the 
same street, on the same block, in the same business, 
are Shylocks. Those men, to get the patronage of any 
one, will break all understandings with other merchants, 
and will sell at ruinous cost, putting their neighbors at 
great disadvantage, expecting to make up the deficit in 
something else. If an honest principle could creep into 
that man's soul, it would die of sheer loneliness ! Tlie 
man twists about, trying to escape the penalty of the 
law, and despises God, while he is just a little anxious 
about the sheriff. The honest man looks about him and 
says: " Well, this rivalry is awful. Perhaps I am more 
scrupulous than I need be. This little bargain I am 
about to enter is a little doubtful ; but then they all do 
it" And so I had a friend who started in commercial 
life, aiid as a book merchant, with a high resolve. He 
said: "In my store there shall bene books that I would 
not have my family read." Time passed on, and one 
day I went into his store and found some iniquitous 
books on the shelf, and I said to him: " How is it possi- 
ble that you can consent to sell such books as these?" 
"Oh," he replied: "I have got over those puritanical 
notions. A man cannot do business in this day unless 
he does it in the way other people do it." To make a 
long story short, he lost his hope of heaven, and in a 
little while he lost his morality, and then he went into a 
mad-house. In other words, when a man casts off God, 
God casts him off. 

One of the mightiest temptations in commercial life, 
in all our cities, to-day, is in the fact that many professed 
Christian men are not square in their bargains. Such 
,men are in Baptist, and Methodist, and Congregational 
Churches, and our own denomination is as largely rep- 
resented as any of them. Our good merchants are fore- 



188 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



most in Christian enterprises; they are patronizers of 
art, philanthropic and patriotic. God will attend to 
them in the day of His coronation. I am not speak- 
ing of them, but of those in commercial life who 
are setting a ruinous example to our young merchants. 
Go through all the stores and offices in the city, and tell 
me in how many of those stores and offices are the prin- 
ciples of Christ's religion dominant? In three- fourths 
of them? No. In half of them? No. In one- tenth 
of them? No. Decide for yourself. 

The impression is abroad, somehow, that charity can 
consecrate iniquitous gains, and that if a man give to 
God a portion of an unrighteous bargain, then the Lord 
will forgive him the rest. The secretary of a benevolent 
society came tome and said: "Mr. So-and-So has given 
a large amount of money to the missionary cause, " men- 
tioning the sum. I said: " I can't believe it." He said: 
"It is so." Well, I went home, staggered and con- 
founded. I never knew the man to give to anything; 
but after awhile I found out that he had been engaged in 
the most infamous kind of an oil swindle, and then he 
proposed to compromise the matter with the Lord, say- 
ing: **!N"ow, here is so much for Thee, Lord. Please to 
let me off!" I want to tell you that the Church of God is 
not a shop for receiving stolen goods, and that if you 
have taken anything from your fellows, you had better 
return it to the men to whom it belongs. If, from the 
nature of the circumstances, that be impossible, you had 
better get your stove red hot, and when the flames are at 
their fiercest, toss in the accursed spoil. God does not 
want it. The commercial world to-day is rotten through 
and through, and many of you know better than I can 
tell you that it requires great strength of moral charac- 
ter to withstand the temptations of business dishones- 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



189 



ties. Thank God, a great many of you have withstood 
the temptations, and are as pure, and upright, and 
honest as the day when you entered business. But you 
are the exceptions in the case. God will sustain a man, 
however, amid all the excitements of business, if he will 
only put his trust in Him. In the drug-store, in Phila- 
delphia, a young man was told that he must sell blacking 
on the Lord's day. He said to the head man of the firm: 
* "I can't possibly do that. I am willing to sell medi- 
cines on the Lord's day, for I think that is right and 
necessary: but I can't sell this patent blacking." He 
was discharged from the place. A Christian man hear- 
ing of it, took him into his employ, and he went on from 
one success to another, until he was known all over the 
land for his faith in God and his good works, as well as 
for his worldly success. When a man has sacrificed any 
temporal, financial good for the sake of his spiritual in- 
terests, the Lord is on his side, and one with God is a 
majority. 

> Again: Look around you and see the pressure of 
political life. How many are going down under this 
influence. There is not one man out of a thousand that 
can stand political life in our cities. Once in awhile a 
man comes and says: "Now I love my city and my 
country, and, in the strength of God, I am going in as a 
sort of missionary to reform politics." The Lord is on 
his side. He comes out as pure as when he went in, and, 
with such an idea, I believe he will be sustained; but he 
is the exception. When such an upright, pure man 
does step into politics, the first thing, the newspapers 
take the job of blackening him all over, and they review 
all his past life, and distort everything that he has done, 
until, from thinking himself a highly respectable citizen, 
he begins to contemplate what a mercy it is that he has 



190 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



been so long out of gaol. The most hopeless, God-for- 
saken people in all our cities are those who, not in a 
missionary spirit, but with the idea of sordid gain, have 
gone into political life. I pray for the prisoners in gaol, 
and think they may be converted to God, but I never 
have any faith to pray for an old politician. 

Then look around and see the allurements to an im- 
pure life. Bad books, unknown to father and mother, 
vile as the lice of Egypt, creeping into some of the best * 
of families of the community; and boys read them 
while the teacher is looking the other way, or at recess, 
or on the corner of the street when the groups are gath- 
ered. These books are read late at night. Satan finds 
them a smooth plank on which he can slide down into 
perdition some of your sons and daughters. Beading 
bad books — one never gets over it. The books may be 
burned, but there is not enough power in all the apoth- 
ecary's preparations to wash out the stain from the soul. 
Father's hands, mother's hands, sister's hands, will not 
wash it out. None but the hand of the Lord God can i 
wash it out. And what is more perilous in regard to 
these temptations, we may not mention them. While 
God in this Bible, from chapter to chapter, thunders His 
denunciation against these crimes, people expect the 
pulpit and the printing-press to be silent oh the subject, 
and just in proportion as people are impure are they 
fastidious on the theme. They are so full of decay and 
death they do not want their sepulchres opened. But I 
shall not be hindered by them. I shall go on in the 
name of the Lord Almighty, before whom you and I 
must at last come in judgment, and I shall pursue that 
vile sin, and thrust it with the two edged-sword of God's 
truth, though I find it sheltered under the chandeliers of 
some of your beautiful parlors. God will turn into des- 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



191 



traction all the unclean, and no splendors of surround- 
ing can make decent that which He has smitten. God 
will not excuse sin merely because it has costlj array, 
and beautiful tapestry, and palatial residence, any more 
than He will excuse that which crawls, a blotch of sores, 
through the lowest cellar. Ever and anon, through some 
law-suit there flashes upon the people of our great cities 
what is transpiring in seemingly respectable circles. You 
call it "High life," you call it "Fast living," you call it 
"People's eccentricity." And while we kick off the 
sidewalk the poor wretch who has not the means to gar- 
nish his iniquity, these lords and ladies, wrapped in 
purple and •fine linen, go unwhipped of public justice. 
Ah, the most dreadful part of the whole thing is that 
there are persons abroad whose whole business it is to 
despoil the young. Salaried by infamous establishments, 
these cormorants of darkness, these incarnate fiends, 
hang around your hotels, and your theatres, and they 
insinuate themselves among the clerks of your stores, 
and, by adroitest art, sometimes get in the purest circles. 
Oh, what an eternity such a man as that will have I As 
the door opens to receive him, thousands of voices will 
cry out: "See here what you have done;" and the wretch 
will wrap himself with fiercer flame and leap into deeper 
darkness, and the multitudes he has destroyed will pur- « 
sue him, and hurl at him the long, bitter, relentless, 
everlasting curse of their own anguish. If there be one 
cup of eternal darkness more bitter than another, they 
will have to drink it to the dregs. If, in all the ocean 
of the lost world that comes billowing up, there be one 
wave more fierce than another, it will dash over them. 
"God will wound the hairy scalp of him who goeth on 
still in his trespasses." 
I think you are persuaded there is but little chance 



THE TIDES OF MUNICIPAL SIN. 



here in Brooklyn, or in New York, or Philadelphia, or 
Boston, for any young man without the grace of God. I 
will even go further and make it more emphatic, and say 
there is no chance for any young man who has not above 
him, and beneath him, and before him, and behind him, 
and on the right of him, and on the left of him, and 
within him, the all-protecting grace of God. My word 
of warning is to those who have recently come to the 
city; some of them entering our banking institutions, 
and some of them our stores and shops. Shelter your- 
selves in God. Do not trust yourselves an hour without 
the defences of Christ's religion. 

I stood one day at Niagara Falls, and I saw what you 
may have seen there, six rainbows bending over that tre- 
mendous plunge. I never saw anything like it before or 
since. Six beautiful rainbows arching that great cat- 
aract! And so over the rapids and the angry precipices 
of sin, where so many have been dashed down, God's beau- 
tiful admonitions hover, a warning arching each peril — 
six of them, fifty of them — ^a thousand of them. Be- 
ware! beware! beware! This afternoon, young men, 
while you have time to reflect upon these things, and 
before the duties of the office and the store, and the shop 
come upon you again, look over this whole subject, and 
after the day has passed, and you hear in the* nightfall 
the voices and the footsteps of the city dying from your 
ear, and it gets so silent that you can hear distinctly 
your watch under your pillow going **tick, tick!" then 
open your eyes, and look out upon the darkness, and see 
two pillars of light, one horizontal, the other perpendi- 
cular, but changing their direction until they come to- 
gether, and your enraptured vision beholds it— -m OBOfls! 



BB8F0NBIBILITY OF OITY BULSB8. 



193 



CHAPTER XIV. 

RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERa 
O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea. — Ezek. zxyii: tL 
This is a part of an impassioned apostrophe to the city 
of Tyre. It was a beautiful city — a majestic city. At 
the east end of the Mediterranean, it sat with one hand 
beckoning the inland trade, and with the other the com- 
merce of foreign nations. It swung a monstrous boom 
across its harbor to shut out foreign enemies, and then 
swung back that boom to let in its friends. The air of 
the desert was fragrant with the spices brought by caravans 
to her fairs, and all seas were cleft into foam by the keel 
of her laden merchantmen. Her markets were rich with 
horses, and mules, and camels from Togarmah; with 
upholstery, and ebony, and ivory from Dedan; with 
emeralds, and agate, and coral from Syria; with wine 
from Helbon; with finest needlework from Ashur and 
Chilmad. Talk about the splendid state-rooms of your 
White Star and French lines of international steamers. 
— ^why the benches of the state-rooms in those Tyrian 
ships were all ivory, and instead of our coarse canvas on 
the masts of the shipping, they had the finest linen, quilted 
together, and inwrought with embroideries almost mirac- 
ulous for beauty. Its columns overshadowed all nations. 
Distant empires felt its heart beat Majestic city I "situate 
at the entry of the sea." 

Bat where now is the gleam of her towers, the roar of 
her chariots, the masts of her shipping! Let the fisher- 
men who dry their nets on the place where she onoe 
13 



194 



RESPONSIBILITY OF OITT SULBBS. 



stood; let the sea that rushes upon the barrenness where 
she once challenged the admiration of all nations ; let the 
barbarians who build their huts on the place where her 
palaces glittered, answer the question. Blotted out for 
ever I She forgot God, and God forgot her. And while 
our modern cities admire her glory, let them take warn- 
ing at her awful doom. 

Cain was the founder of the first city, and I suppose it 
took after him in morals. It is a long while before a city 
can get over the character of those who founded it 
Were they criminal exiles, the filth, and the prisons, and 
the debauchery are the shadows of such founders. New 
York will not for two or three hundred years escape 
from the good influences of its founders, — the pious set- 
tlers whose prayers went up from the very streets where 
now banks discount, and brokers shave, and companies 
declare dividends, and smugglers swear Custom-house 
lies; and above the roar of the drays, and the crack of 
auctioneers' mallets is heard the ascription — "We worship 
thee, O thou almighty dollar!" The church that once 
stood on Wall-street still throws its blessing over all the 
scene of traffic, and upon the ships that fold their white 
wings in the harbor. Originally men gathered in cities 
from necessity. It was to escape the incendiary's torch 
or the assassin's dagger. Only the very poor lived in 
the country, those who had nothing that could be stolen, 
or vagabonds who wanted to be near their place of busi- 
ness; but since civilization and religion have made it 
safe tor men to live almost anywhere, men congregate in 
eities because of the opportunity for rapid gain. Cities 
are not necessarily evils, as has sometimes been argued. 
They have been the birth-place of civilization. In them 
popular liberty has lifted up its voice. Witness Genoa, 
and Pisa, and Venice. The entrance of the representa- 



BESPONSIBILlTY OF CITY KULERS. 195 

tives of the cities in the legislatures of Europe was the 
death-blow to feudal kingdoms. Cities are the patron- 
izers of art and literature, — architecture pointing to its 
British Museum in London, its Koyal Library in Paris, 
its Vatican in Eome. Cities hold the world's sceptre. 
Africa was Carthage, Greece was Athens, England is 
London, France is Paris, Italy is Eome, an^ the cluster 
of cities in which God has cast our lot will yet decide 
the destiny of the American people. 

The particular city in which God has given us a resi- 
dence is under especial advantage. I may this morning 
apostrophize it in the words of my text, and say: *'0 
thou that art situate at the entry of the sea ! " Standing 
at the gates of the continent, we try to keep that which 
is worth keeping, and we try to pass on that which is of 
no use. The best pictures are in our galleries for exhi- 
bition, and foreign orators stop long enough to speak in 
our halls. The finest equipages may be seen on our 
Broadway, and making the «circuit of our Central and 
Prospect Parks, — places fascinating with mosque, and 
fountains, and sculptured bridges, embowered walks, and 
menageries of wild animals, for the amusement of the 
people; while our Croton and Kidgewood aqueducts 
pour their brightness and refreshment into the hot lips 
of the thirsty cities. Thanking God this morning for 
the pleasant place in which He has east our lot ; and at 
this season of the year when so many of the offices of the 
«city are changing hands, and so many new men are com- 
ing into positions of public trust, I have thought it might 
be useful to talk a little while about the moral responsi- 
bility resting upon the office-bearers in the city — a theme 
as appropriate to those who are governed as to the gov- 
ernors. The moral characters of those who rule a city 
has much to do with the character of the city itself. Men, 



196 EESPONSIBILITY OF CITY EITLERS. 

women, and children are all interested in national politics. 
When the great Presidential election conies, every patriot 
wants to be found at the ballot box. We are all inter- 
ested in the discussion of national reconstruction, national 
finance, national debt, and we read the laws of Congress, 
and we are wondering who will sit next in the Presiden- 
tial chair. Now, that may be all very well — is very well ; 
but it is high time that we took some of the attention 
which we have been devoting to national affairs and 
brought it to the study of municipal government. This 
it seems to me now is the chief point to be taken. Make 
the cities right, and the nation will be right. I have 
noticed that according to their opportunities there has 
really been more corruption in municipal governments 
in this country than in the State and national Legisla- 
tures. Now, is there no hope? With the mightiest 
agent in our hand, the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
shall not all our cities be reformed, and purified, and re- 
deemed? I believe the ,day will come. I am in full 
sympathy with those who are opposed to carrying politics 
into religion ; but our cities will never be reformed and 
purified until we carry religion into politics. I look 
over this city and I see that all our great interests are to 
be affected in the future, as they have been affected in the 
past, by the character of those who in the different de- 
partments rule over us, and I propose this morning to 
classify some of those interests. 

In the first place I remark : Commercial ethics are 
always affected by the moral or immmal character of those 
who have municipal supremacy. Officials that wink 
at fraud, and that have neither censure nor arraignment 
for glittering dishonesties, always weaken the pulse 
of commercial honor. Every shop, every store, every 
bazaar, every factory in your city feels the moral charac- 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 197 

ter of your City Hall. If in any city there be a dishonest 
mayoralty, or an unprincipled Common Council, or a 
Court susceptible to bribes, in that city there will be 
unlimited license for all kinds of trickery and sin ; while, 
on the other hand, if officials are faithful to their oath of 
office, if the laws are promptly executed, if there is vigi- 
lance in regard to the outbranchings of crime, there is 
the highest protection for all bargain making. A mer- 
chant may stand in his, store and say: * 'Now I'll have 
nothing to do with city politics ; I will not soil my hands 
with the slush ;" nevertheless the most insigniiBicant trial 
in the police court will affect that merchant directly or 
indirectly. What style of clerk issues the writ ; what 
style of constable makes the arrest ; what style of attor- 
ney issues the plea; what style of judge charges the 
jury ; what style of sheriff executes the sentence — these 
are questions that strike your counting-rooms to the 
centre. You may not throw it off. In the city of New 
York Christian merchants for a great while said : "We'll 
have nothing to do with the management of public 
affairs," and they allowed everything to go at loose ends 
until there rolled up in that city a debt of nearly 120,000,- 
000 dollars. The municipal government became a hissing 
and a by- word in the whole earth, and then the Christian 
merchants saw their folly, and they went and took posses- 
sion of the ballot boxes. I wish all commercial men to 
understand that they are not independent of the moral 
character of the men who rule over them, but must be 
thoroughly, mightily affected by them. 

So, also, of the educational interests of a city. Do you 
know that there are in this country sixty-five thousand 
common schools, and that there are over seven millions 
of pupils, and that the majority of those schools and the 
majority of those pupils are in our cities ? Now, this 



198 KESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 

great multitude of children will be affected by the intel- 
ligence or ignorance, the virtue or the vice, of Boards of 
Education and Boards of Control. There are cities — 
am glad ours is not one of them — but there are cities 
where educational affairs are settled in the low caucus in 
the abandoned parts of the cities, by men full of igno- 
rance and rum. It ought not to be so; but in many 
cities it is so. I hear the tramp of the coming genera- 
tions. "What that great multitude of youth shall be for 
this world and the next will be affected very . much by 
the character of your public schools. You had better 
multiply the moral and religious influences about the 
common schools rather than subtract from them. In- 
stead of driving the Bible out, you had better drive the 
Bible further in. May God defend our glorious common- 
school system, and send into rout and confusion all its 
sworn enemies ! 

I have also to say that the character of officials in a 
city affects the domestic circle. In a city where grog- 
shops have their own way, and gambling hells are not 
interfered with, and for fear of losing political influence 
officials close their eyes to festering abominations — in 
all those cities, the home interest need to make im- 
ploration. The family circles of the city must inevit- 
ably be affected by the moral character or the immoral 
character of those who rule over them. 

I will go further and say that the religious interests 
of a city are thus affected. The church to-day has to 
contend with evils that the civil law ought to smite ; and 
fvhile I would npt have the civil government in any wise 
relax its energy in the arrest and punishment of crime, 
I would have a thousand-fold more energy put forth in 
the drying un of the fountains of iniquity. The Church 
of God asks no pc^<iriary aid from political power ; but 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 199 

does ask that in addition to all the evils we must neces- 
sarily contend against we shall not have to fight also mu- 
nicipal negligence. Ojthatiii all our cities Christian people 
would rise up, and that they would put their hand on the 
helm before piratical demagogues have swamped the ship. 
Instead of giving so much tim-e to national politics, give 
some of your attention, to municipal government. 

I am glad to know that recently our city has been 
cleansed of a great deal of political vermin, and yet it is 
not all gone. I see them still crawling around your City 
Hall — the disgust of all good men. Somehow,inthe grind- 
ing of the political machine, they come on the top of the 
wheel. They electioneer hard at the polls, and they 
must have some crumbs of office or they will change 
their politics. The Democratic party would have us be- 
lieve that that kind of men belong to the Eepublican 
party, and the Eepublican party would have us believe 
that that kind of men belong to the Democratic party. 
They are both wrong. They belong to both. It was 
well illustrated at the last election in New York City, 
where the two political parties, rousing themselves up to 
V the fact that they ought to have some great reformer, 
. some large-hearted reformer, some unimpeachable re- 
former — the two political parties joined together and 
elected to the Senatorial chair — John Morrissey ! 0, I 
demand that the Christian people who have been stand- 
ing aloof from public affairs come back, and in the might 
of God try to save our cities. If things are or have been 
bad, it is because you have let them be bad. That Chris- 
tian man who merely goes to the polls and casts his vote 
does not do his duty. It is not the ballot box that de- 
cides the election, it is the political caucus ; and if at the 
primary meetings of the two political parties unfit and 
bad men are nominated, then the ballot box has nothing 



200 RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 

to do save to take its choice between two thieves ! In 
out churches, by reformatory organization, in every way 
let us try to tone up the moral' sentiment in these cities. 
The rulers are those whom the people choose, and depend 
I upon it that in all the cities, as long as pure-hearted men 
stand aloof from politics because they despise hot parti- 
sanship, just so long in many of our cities will rum make 
the nominations, and rum control the ballot box, and rum 
inaugurate the officials. 

I take a step further this morning, and I ask that all 
those of you who believe in the omnipotence of prayer, 
day by day, and every day, present your city officials 
before God for a blessing. Pray Jor your mayor. The 
chief magistrate of five hundred thousand souls is in a 
position of great responsibility. Many of the kings, and 
queens, and emperors of other days had no such domin- 
ion. With the scratch of a pen he may advance a benefi- 
cent institution or baulk an elevated steam railway 
confiscation. By appointments he may bless or curse 
every hearthstone in the city. If in the Episcopal 
churches, by the authority of the Litany, and in our non- 
Episcopate churches, we every Sabbath pray for the 
President of the United States, why not, then, be just as 
hearty in our supplications for the chief magistrate of 
our cities, for their guidance, for their health, for their 
present and everlasting morality? 

But go further, and pray for your Common Council. 
They hold in their hands a power splendid for good or 
terrible for evil. They have many temptations. In 
many of the cities whole Boards of Common Council- 
men have gone down in the maelstrom of political cor- 
ruption. They could not stand the power of the bribe. 
Corruption came in and sat beside them, and sat behind 
them, and sat before them. They recklessly voted away 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULEES. 201 

the hard-earned moneys of the people. They were bought 

out, body, mind and soul, so that at the end of their 

term of office they had not enough of moral remains left 

to make a decent fune?:al. They went into office with 

the huzza of the multitude. They came out with the 

anathema of all decent people. There is not one man 

out of a hundred that can endure the temptations of the 

Common Councilmen in our great cities. And if a man 

in that position have the courage of a Cromwell, and the 

independence of an Andrew Jackson, and the public 

spiritedness of a John Frederick Oberlin, and the piety 

of an Edward Pay son, he will have no surplus to throw 

away. "Pray for these men. *Every man likes to be 

prayed for. Do you know how Dr. Norman McLeod 

became the Queen's chaplain ? It was by a warm-hearted 

prayer in the Scotch kirk, in behalf of the Eoyal Family^ • 

one Sabbath when the Queen and her son were present 

incognito. 

Yes, go further, my friends, and pray for your police. 
Their perils, and temptations, best known to themselves. 
They hold the ordfer and the peace of your city in their 
grasp. But for their intervention you would not be safe 
for an hour. They must face the storm. They must 
rush in where it seems to them almost instant death. 
They must put the hand of arrest on the armed maniac, 
and corner the murderer. They must refuse large re- 
wards for withdrawing complaints. They must unravel 
intricate plots, and trace dark labyrinths of crime, and 
develop suspicions into certainties. They must be cool 
while others are frantic. They must be vigilant while 
others are somnolent, impersonating the very villainy 
they want to seize. In the police forces of our great 
cities are to-day men of as thorough character as that of 
the old detective of New York, addressed to whom there 



202 EESPONSIBILITY OP CITY RULERSc 

came letters from London asking for help ten years after 
he was dead — letters addressed to * 'Jacob Hayes, High 
Constable of New York. " Your police need your appre- 
ciation, your sympathy, your gratitude, and, above all, 
your prayers. And there is no church more indebted 
to that class of men than this. When, last year, we were 
arraigning some public iniquities, and the wrath of all 
the powers of darkness seemed to be stirred up, the police 
came in — not at our invitation, but voluntarily — and 
sixty of them sat in every service in this church, for six 
weeks, that there might be neither interruption nor 
bloodshed. We thank them. We sympathize with 
them. We pray for thfem. * 

Yea, I want you to go further, and pray every day for 
your prison inspectors and your jail-keepers, — work 
awful and beneficent. Eough men, cruel men, im- 
patient men, are not fit for those places. They have 
under their care men who were once as good as you, but 
they got tripped up. Bad company, or strong drink, or 
a strange conjunction of circumstances, flung them head- 
long. Go down that prison corridol* and ask them how 
they got in, and about their families, and what their 
early prospects in life were, and you will find that they 
are very much like yourself, except in this : that God 
kept you while He did not restrain them. Just one false 
step made the difference between them and you. They 
want more than prison bars, more than jail fare, more 
than handcuffs and hopplers, more than a vermin-cov- 
ered couch to reform them. Pray God, day by day, that 
the men who have these unfortunates in charge may be 
merciful, Christianly strategic, and the means of reforma- 
^tion and rescue. Some years ago a city pastor in New 
York was called to the city prison to attend a funeral. 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 203 

A young woman had committed a crime, and was incar- 
cerated, and her mother came to visit her, and died on 
the visit. The mother, having no home, was buried from 
her daughter's prison-cell. After the service was over, 
the imprisoned daughter came up to the minister of 
Christ, and said : "Wouldn't you like to see my poor 
mother?" And while they stood at the coffin, the min- 
ister of Christ said to that imprisoned soul : "Don't you 
feel to-day, in the presence of your mother's dead body, 
as if you ought to make a vow before God that you will 
do differently and live a better life?" She stood for a 
few moments, and then the tears rolled down her cheeks, 
and she pulled from her right hand the worn-out glove 
that she had put on in honor of the obsequies, and, hav- 
ing bared her right hand, she put it upon the chill brow 
of her dead mother, and said : "By the help of God I 
swear I will do differently. God help me." And she 
kept her vow. And years after, when she was told of 
J;he incident, she said : "When that minister of the Gos- 
pel said : *God bless you and help you to keep the vow 
that you have made,' I cried out, and I said: *You bless 
me! Do you bless me? Why, that's the first kind 
word I've heard in ten years;' and it thrilled through 
my soul, and it was the means of my reformation, and 
ever since, by the grace of God, I've tried to live a 
Christian life." yes, there are many amid the crimi- 
nal classes that may be reformed. Pray for the men 
who have these unfortunates in charge ; and who knows 
but that, when you are leaving this world, you may hear 
the voice of Christ dropping to your dying pillow, say- 
ing: "I was sick and in prison, and you visited me." 
Yea, I take the suggestion of the Apostle Paul, and ask 
you to pray for all who are in authority, that we may 
lead quiet and peaceable lives in godliness and honesty. 



204 RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 

My word this morning now is to all in this assembly 
and to those whom these words shall come who hold any 
public position of trust in our midst. You are God's 
representatives. God the King, and Kuler, and Judge, 
sets you in His place. 0, be faithful in the discharge of 
all your duties, so that when Brooklyn is in ashes, and 
the world itself is a red scroll of flame, you may be in 
the mercy and grace of Christ rewarded for your faith- 
fulness. It was that feeling which gave such eminent 
qualifications for office to Neal Dow, Mayor of Portland, 
and to Judge McLean, of Ohio, and to Benjamin F. 
Butler, Attorney-General of New York, and to George 
Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, and to Theodore 
Frelinghuysen, Senator of the United States, and to 
William Wilberforce, member of the British Parliament. 
You may make the rewards of eternity the emoluments 
of your office. What care you for adverse political criti- 
cism if you have God on your side ! The one, or the 
two, or the three years of your public trust will pass 
away, and all the years of your earthly service, and then 
the tribunal will be lifted, before which you and I must 
appear. May God make you so faithful now that the 
last scene shall be to you exhilaration and rapture. I 
wish this morning to exhort all good people, whether 
they are the governors or the governed, to make one 
grand effort for the salvation, the purification, the re- 
demption of Brooklyn. Do you not know that there are 
multitudes going down to ruin, temporal and eternal, 
dropping quicker than words drop from my lips ? Grog- 
shops swallow them up. Gambling hells devour them. 
Houses of shame are damning them. 0, let us toil, and 
pray, and preach, and vote until all these wrongs are 
righted. What we do we must do quickly. Soon you 
will not sit there, and I will not stand here, With our 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 205 

rulers, and on the same platform, we must at last come 
before the throne of God to answer for what we have 
done for the bettering of the condition of the five hun- 
dred thousand people in Brooklyn. Alas ! if on that day 
it be found that your hand has been idle and my pulpit 
has been silent. 0, ye who are pure, and honest, and 
Christian, go to work and help me to make this city 
pure, and honest, and Christian. 

Lest it may have been thought that I am this morning 
preaching only to what are called the better classes, my . 
final word is to some dissolute soul that has strayed here 
to-day. Though you may be covered with all crimes, 
though you may be smitten with all leprosies, though 
you may have gone through the whole catalogue of 
iniquity, and may not have been in church for twenty 
years before to-day — before you leave this house you 
may have your nature entirely reconstructed, and upon 
your brow, hot with infamous practices and besweated 
with exhausting indulgences, God will place the flashing 
coronet of a Saviour's forgiveness. "0, no!" you say, 
"if you knew who I am and where I came from this 
morning, you wouldn't say that to me. I don't believe 
the Gospel you are preaching speaks of my case. " Yes 
it does, my brother. And then when you tell me that, 
I think' of what St. Teresa said when reduced to utter 
destitution, having only two pieces of money left, she 
jingled the two pieces of money in her hand and said : 
" St. Teresa and two pieces of money are nothing ; but 
St, Teresa and two pieces of money and God are all 
things. " And I tell you to-day that while a sin and a 
sinner are nothing, a sin and a sinner and an ail-forgiv- 
ing and all-compassionate God are everything. 

Who is that that I see coming ? I know his step. I 
know his rags. Who is it"? A prddigaL Come, people 



206 RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY RULERS. 

of God, let US go out and meet him. Get the best robe 
you can find in all this house. Let the angels of God 
fill their chalices and drink to his eternal rescue.. 
Come, people of God, let us go out to meet him. The 
prodigal is coming home. The dead is alive again, and 
the lost is found. Hallelujah ! 

"Pleased with the news, the saints below 

In songs their tongues employ; 
Beyond the skies the tidings go, 

And Heaven is filled with joy. 

"Nor angels can their joy contain, 

But kindle with new fire; 
*The sinner lost is found,' they sing. 
And strike the sounding lyre." 



t 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



207 



GHAPTEK XV. 

SAPEGUAEDS OF YOUNG MEN. 

"I3 the young man Absalom safe?" — II. Sam. xviii: 29. 

The heart of David, the father, was wrapped up in his 
boy Absalom. He was a splendid boy, judged by the 
rules of worldy criticism. From the crown of his head 
to the sole of his foot there was not a single blemish. 
The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant shock of 
hair, that when once a year it was shorn, what was cut 
off weighed over three pounds. But, notwithstanding 
all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a bad boy, and 
broke his father's heart. He was plotting to get the 
throne of Israel. He had marshalled an army to over- 
throw his father's government. The day of battle had 
come. The conflict was begun. David, the father, sat 
between the gates of the palace waiting for the tidings 
of the conflict. Oh, how rapidly his heart beat with 
emotion. Two great questions were to be decided : the 
safety of his boy, and the continuance of the throne of 
Israel. After awhile, a servant, standing on the top of 
the house, looks off, and he sees some' one running. He 
is coming with great speed, and the man on the top of 
the house announces the coming of the messenger, and 
the father watches and waits, and as soon as the messen- 
ger from the field of battle comes within hailing distance 
the father cries out. Is it a question in regard to the 
establishment of his throne ? Does he say : '.'Have the 
armies of Israel been victorious ? Am I to continue in my 



208 



SAFEGUARDS OP YOUNG MEN. 



imperial authority ? Have I overthrown my enemies ?" 
Oh ! no. There is one question that springs from his heart 
to the lip, and springs from the lip into the ear of the 
besweated and bedusted messenger flying from the bat- 
tle-field — the question, "Is the young man Absalom safe ?" 
When it was told to David, the King, that, though his 
armies had been victorious, his son had been slain, the 
father turned his back upon the congratulations of the 
nation, and went up the stairs of his palace, his heart 
breaking as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and 
then again pressing them against his temples as though 
he would press them in, crying : "0 Absalom ! my son ! 
my son ! Would God I had died for thee, Absalom I 
my son ! my son !" 

My friends, the question which David, the King, asked 
in regard to his son is the question that resounds to-day 
in the hearts of hundreds of parents. Yea, there are a 
great multitude of young men here who know that the 
question of the text is appropriate when asked in regard 
to them. They know the temptations by which they are . 
surrounded ; they see so many who started life with as ' 
good resolutions as they have who have fallen in the 
path, and they are ready to hear me ask the question of 
my text: "Is the young man Absalom safe?" The fact 
is that this life is full of peril. He who undertakes it 
without the grace of God and a proper understanding 
of the conflict into which he is going must certainly be 
defeated. Just look off upon society to-day. Look at 
the shipwreck of men for whom fair things were prom- 
ised, and who started life with every advantage. Look 
at those who have dropped from high social position, 
and from great fortune, disgraced for time, disgraced 
for eternity. To prove that this life is an awful peril 
unless a man has the grace of God to defend him, I point 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 209 

, to that wreck of Friday at Ludlow street Jail, showing 
on what a desolate coast a strong craft may crash and 
part. Let there be no exhilaration over that man's fate. 
Instead of the chuckle of satisfaction, let there be in 
every Christian soul a deep sadness. The fact is, that 
there are tens of thousands of men in this country who, 
under the same pressure of temptation, would have 
fallen as low. Instead of bragging and boasting how 
you have maintained your integrity, you had better get 
down on your knees and thank God that His Almighty 
grace has kept you from the same moral catastrophe. 
There is no advice more appropriate to you and this 
whole country this morning than the advice of the Scrip- 
ture, which says: "Let him that standeth take heed 
lest he fall. " All my sympathies are for the afflicted 
family of that dead prisoner. For the last seven years 
some of them I know have endured an inquisition of 
torture. May the God of all comfort help them in this 
day when there are so few to pray for them. In the 
presence of this Christian assemblage I invoke the God 
of all compassion to have mercy upon those bereft chil- 
dren. It is hard to see our friends die, even when they 
die in Christian triumph and with all blissful surround- 
ings ; but alas ! when to the natural anguish is added the 
anguish of a moral and a lifetime shipwreck. Ah ! my 
friends, let us remember that that man made full expia- 
tion to society for his crimes against it. Let us remem- 
ber that by pangs of body that no doctor could arrest, 
and by horrors of soul which no imagination can describe, 
he fully paid the price of his iniquity. Let others do as 
they may, I will not throw one nettle or one thistle on 
that man's grave. But, my friends, no minister of 
religion, no man who stands as I do. Sabbath morning 
and Sabbath night and Friday night, before a great 



210 SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 

multitude of young men, trying to help them and edu- 
cate them for time and eternity, can allow that event of 
the past week to go by without drawing from it a lesson 
of the fact that life is an awful peril without the religion 
of Jesus Christ, and that **the way of the transgressor 
is hard." No stouter nature ever started out on this 
world than William M. Tweed. He conquered poverty ; 
he conquered lack of education ; he achieved an alder- 
manic chair in the metropolis of this country ; he gained 
a position in the Congress at Washington, and then he 
took his position on a financial throne of power at Albany, 
his frown making legislative assemblages tremble, while 
he divided the notoriety with James Fisk, Jr., of being 
the two great miscreants of the nineteenth century. 
Alas ! Alas ! Young man, look at the contrast — in ele- 
gant compartment of Wagner's palace-car, surrounded 
by wines and cards and obsequious attendants, going to 
the Senatorial place in Albany ; then look again at the 
plain box in the undertaker's wagon at three o'clock of 
last Friday at the door of a prison. Behold the contrast 
— the pictured and bouqueted apartments at the Delavan, 
liveried servants admitting millionaires and Senators 
who were flattered to take his hand ; then see the almost 
friendless prisoner on a plain cot, throwing out his dying 
hand to clutch that of Luke, his black attendant. Be- 
hold the wedding party at the mansion, the air bewitched 
with crowns, and stars, and harps of tuberoses and jap- 
onicas; among the wedding presents, forty complete 
sets of silver ; fifteen diamond sets, one set of diamonds 
worth 145,000; the wedding dress at the expense of 
$4,000, with trimmings that cost another $1,000 ; two 
baskets of silverware, representing icebergs, to contain 
the ices, while Polar bears of silver lie down on the 
handles of the baskets ; the banquet, the triumph of 



SAFEGfUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



211 



Delmonico's lifetime ; the whole scene a bewilderment 
of costliness and magnificence. And then behold the 
low-ceiling room, looking out on a dingy street, where 
poor^ exhausted, forsaken, betrayed, sick William M. 
Tweed lies a dying. From how high up to how low 
down ! There were many common people in New York 
who for years were persuaded by what they saw that an 
honest and laborious life did not pay. As the carriage 
swept by containing the jewelled despoiler of public 
funds, men felt likfe throwing their burdens down and 
trying some other way of getting a livelihood ; but where 
is the clerk on $500 salary a year, where is the porter 
who will to-morrow sweep out the store, where is the 
scavenger of the street who would take Tweed's years of 
fraudulent prosperity if he must also take Tweed's suf- 
ferings, and Tweed's dishonor, and Tweed's death ? Ah ! 
there never was such an illustration for the young men 
of New York and Brooklyn of the fact that dishonesty 
will not pay. Take a dishonest dollar sind bury it in 
the centre of the earth, and heap all the rocks of the 
mountain on the top of it ; then cover these rocks with 
all the diamonds of Golconda,and all the silver of Nevada, 
• and all the gold of California and Australia, put on the 
top of these all banking and moneyed institutions, and 
they cannot keep down that one dishonest dollar. That 
one dishonest dollar in the centre of the earth will begin 
to heave and rock and upturn itself until it comes to the 
resurrection of damnation. "As a partridge sitteth on 
eggs and hatcheth them not, so riches got by fraud, a 
man shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at 
the end he shall be a fool." You tell me that in the last 
days the man of whom I speak read his Bible three times 
a day. I cast no slur on such a thing as that. It was 
beautiful, and it was appropriate. God could save that 



212 SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 

/ 

man as easily as He could save you or me. Had 1 been 
called to do so, I should have knelt by his cot in the 
prison and prayed for his soul with as much confidence 
as I would kneel by your bedside. Oh ! the Lord, long- 
suffering, merciful, and gracious ; height above all height, 
depth below all depth, and any man who cries for mercy 
shall get it. But who would want to live a life hostile 
to the best interests of society, even though in his last 
moments he could make his peace with God and enter 
heaven? So I stand here before the young men, and I 
am going to have a plain talk with you, and lam going 
to offer you some safeguards. I shall not preach to you 
as a minister preaches to a formalistic congregation. I 
have no gown, or bands, or surplice ; but I take you by 
both hands, my dear brother, and from what I know of 
life, and from what I know of God, and from what^ I 
know of the promises of Divine grace, I shall solemnly 
yet cheerfully address you. God gives me a great many 
young men her^ Sabbath by Sabbath, and it is my great 
ambition not only to reach heaven myself, but to take 
them all along with me. And I will, I will, God help- 
ing me. . 

The first safeguard of which I want to speak is a love 
of home. There are those who have no idea of the 
pleasures that concentrate around that word *'home." 
Perhaps your early abode was shadowed with vice or 
poverty. Harsh words, and petulance, and scowling 
may have destroyed all the sanctity of that spot. Love, 
kindness, and self-sacrifice, which have built their altars 
in so many abodes, were strangers in your father's house. 
God pity you, young m^n ; you never had a home. But 
a multitude in this audience can look back to a spot that 
they can never forget. It may have been a lowly roof, 
but you cannot think of it this morning without a dash 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOtJNG MEN. 213 

of emotion. You have seen nothing on earth that so 
stirred your soul. A stranger passing along that place 
might see nothing remarkable about it ; but oh ! how 
much it means to you. Fresco on palace wall does not 
mean so much to you as those rough-hewn rafters. Parks 
and bowers and trees on fashionable watering-place or 
country-seat do not mean so much to you as that brook 
that ran in front of the plain farm-house, and singing 
under the weeping willows. The barred gatewy swunp 
open by porter in full dress, does not mean as much tc 
you as that swing-gate, your sister on one side of it, and 
you on the other ; she gone fitteen years ago into glory. 
That scene coming back to you to-day, as you swept , 
backward and forward on the gate, singing the songs oi 
your childhood. But there are those here who have 
their second dwelling-place. It is your adopted home. 
That also is sacred forever. There you established the 
first family altar. There your children were born. In 
that room flapped the wing of the death angel. Under 
that, roof, when your work was done, you expect to lie 
down and die. There is only one word in all the lan- 
guage .that can convey your idea of that place, and that 
word.is *<home." Now, let me say that I never knew 
a man who was faithful to his early and adopted home 
who was given over at the same time to any gross form 
of wickedness. If you find more enjoyment in the club- 
room, in the literary society, in the art-saloon, than you 
do in these unpretending home pleasures, you are on 
the road to ruin. Though you may be cut off from your 
early associates, and though you may be separated from 
all your kindred, young man, is there not a room some- 
where that you can call your own ? Though it be the 
fourth story of a third-class boarding house, into that 
room gather books, and pictures, and a harp. Hang 



214 SAFEGUAEDS OF YOUNG MEN. / 

your mother's portrait over the mantel. Bid^iinholy 
mirth stand back from that threshold. Consecrate some 
spot in that room with the knee of prayer. By the 
memory of other days, a father's counsel, a mother's 
love, and a sister's confidence, call it home. 

Another safeguard for these young men is industrious 
habit. There are a great many people trying to make 
their way through the world with their wits instead of 
by honest toil. There is a young man who comes from 
the country to the city. He fails twice before he is as 
old as his father was when he first saw th^ spires of the 
great town. At twenty-one years of age he knows Wall 
Street from Trinity Church to East Eiver docks. He is 
seated in his room at a rent of $2,000 a year, waiting for 
the banks to declare their dividends and the stocks to 
run up. After awhile he gets impatient. He tries to 
improve his penmanship by making copy-plates of other 
merchants' signatures! Never mind — all is right in 
business. After awhile he has his estate. Now is the 
time for him to retire to the country, amid the flocks 
and the herds, to culture the domestic virtues. Now 
the young men who were his schoolmates in boyhood 
will come, and with their ox teams draw him logs, and 
with their hard hands will help to heave up the castle. 
That is no fancy sketch ; it is every-day life. I should 
not wonder if there were a rotten beam in that palace. 
I should not wonder if God should smite him with dire 
sicknesses, and pour into his cup a bitter draught that 
will thrill him with unbearable agony. I should not 
wonder if that man's children grew up to be to him a 
disgrace, and to make his life a shame. I should not 
wonder if that man died a dishonorable death, and were 
tumbled into a dishonorable grave, and then went into 
the gnashing of teeth. The way of the ungodly shall 



SA.FEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 215 

perish. Oh ! young man, you must have industry of 
head, cr hand, or foot, or perish. Do not have the idea 
that you can get along in the world by genius. The 
curse of this country to-day is genius — men with large 
self-conceit and nothing else. The man who proposes to 
make his living by his wits probably has not any. I' 
should rather be an ox, plain, and plodding and useful, 
than to be an eagle, high-flying and good-for-nothing but 
to pick out the eyes of carcasses. Even in the Garden of 
Eden, it was not safe for Adam to be idle, so God made 
him an horticulturist ; and if the married pair had kept 
busy dressing the vines, they would not have been saun- 
tering under the trees, hankering after fruit that ruined 
them and their posterity ! Proof positive of the fact that 
when people do not attend to their business they get into 
mischief. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her 
ways and be wise ; which, having no overseer or guide, 
provideth her food in the summer and gathereth her 
meat in the harvest." Satan is a roaring lion, and you 
can never destroy him by gun or pistol or sword. The 
weapons with which you are to beat him back are ham- 
mer, and adze, and saw, and pickaxe, and yardstick, and 
the weapon of honest toil. Work, work, or die. 

Another safeguard that I want to present to these 
young men is a high ideal of life. Sometimes soldiers 
going into battle shoot into the ground instead of into 
the hearts of their enemies. They are apt to take aim 
too low, and it is very often that the captain, going into 
conflict with his men, will cry out, *'Now, men, aim 
high !" The fact is that in life a great many men take 
no aim at all. The artist plans out his entire thought 
before he puts it upon canvas, before he takes up the 
crayon or the chisel. An architect thinks out the 
entire building before the workmen begin. Although 



216 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



everything may seem to be unorganized, that arch- 
itect has in his mind every Corinthian column, 
every Gothic arch, every Byzantine capital. A poet 
thinks out the entire plot of his poem before he 
begins to chime the cantos of tinkling rhythms. And 
yet there are a great many men who start the important 
structure of human life without knowing whether it is 
going to be a rude Tartar's hut or a St. Mark's Cathedral, 
and begin to write out the intricate poem of their life 
without knowing whether it is to be a Homer's ''Odyssey" 
or a rhymester's botch. Out of one thousand, nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine have no life-plot. Booted and 
spurred and caparisoned, they hasten along, and I run 
out and I say: ''Hallo, man! Whither away?" "No- 
where!" they say. Oh! young man, make every day's 
duty a filling up of the great life-plot. Alas ! that there 
should be on this sea of life so many ships that seem 
bound for no port. They are swept every whither by 
wind and wave, up by the mountains and down by the 
valleys. They sail with no chart. They gaze on no 
star. They long for no harbor. Oh ! young man, have 
a high ideal and press to it, and it will be a mighty safe- 
guard. There never were grander opportunities opening 
before young men than are opening now. Young men 
of the strong arm, and of the stout heart, and of the 
bounding step, I marshal you to-day for a great achieve- 
ment. . • 

Another safeguard is a respect for the Sabbath. Tell 
me how a young man spends his Sabbath, and I will tell 
you what are his prospects in business, and I will tell 
you what are his prospects for the eternal world. God has 
thrust into our busy life a sacred day when we are to 
look after our souls. Is it exorbitant, after giving six 
days to the feeding and the clothing of these perishable 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



217 



bodies, that God should demand one day for the feeding 
and the clothing of the immortal soul ? Oi^r bodies are 
seven-day clocks, and they need to be wound up, and if 
they are not wound up they run down into the grave. 
No man can continuously break the Sabbath and keep 
his physical and mental health. Ask those aged men 
and they will tell you they never knew men who continu- 
ously broke the Sabbath who did not fail either in mind, 
body or moral principle. A manufacturer gave this as 
his experience. He said : "I owned a factory on the 
Lehigh. Everything prospered. I kept the Sabbath, 
and everything went on well. But one Sabbath morning 
I bethought myself of a new shuttle, and I thought I 
would invent that shuttle before sunset ; and I refused 
all food and drink until I had completed that shuttle. 
By sundown I had completed it. The next day, Monday, 
I showed to my workmen and friends this new shuttle. 
They all congratulated me on my great success. I put 
that shuttle into play. I enlarged my business ; but, sir, 
that Sunday's work cost me $30,000. From that day 
everything went wrong. I failed in business, and I lost 
my mill. " Oh, my friends, keep the Lord's day. You 
may think it old-fogy advice, but I give it to you now : 
"Eemember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six 
days shalt thou labor and do all thy work ; but the sev- 
enth is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou 
shalt not do any work." A man said that he would 
prove that all this was a fallacy, and so he said shall 
raise a Sunday crop. " And he ploughed the field on the 
Sabbath, and then he put in the seed on the Sabbath 
and he cultured the ground on the Sabbath. When the 
harvest was ripe he reaped it on the Sabbath, and he car- 
ried it into the mow on the Sabbath, and then he stood 
out defiant to his Christian neighbors and said : ''There, 



218 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



that is my Sunday crop, and it is all garnered. " After 
awhile a storm came up, and a great darkness, and the 
lightnings of heaven struck the barn, and away went his 
Sunday crop ! 

There is one safeguard that I want to present. I have 
saved it until the last because I want it to be the more 
emphatic. The great safeguard for every young man is the 
Christian religion. Nothing can take the place of it. You 
may have gracefulness enough to put to the blush Lord 
Chesterfield, you may have foreign languages dropping 
from your tongue, you may discuss laws and literature, 
you may have a pen of unequaled polish and power, you 
may have so much business tact that you can get the 
largest salary in a banking house, you may be as sharp 
as Herod and as strong as Samson, and with as long 
locks as those which hung Absalom, and yet you have 
no safety against temptation. Some of you look forward 
to life with grfeat despondency. I know it. I see it 
in your faces from time to time. You say: "All the 
occupations and professions are full, and there's no 
chance for me." "Oh ! young man, cheer up, I will tell 
you how you can make your fortune. Seek first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other 
things will be added. I know you do not want to be 
mean in this matter. You will not empty the brimming 
cup of life, and then pour the dregs on God's altar. To 
a generous Saviour you will not act like that ; you have 
not the heart to act like that. That is not manly. That 
is not honorable. That is not brave. Your great want 
is a new heart, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ 
I tell you so to-day, and the blessed Spirit presses 
through the solemnities of this hour to put the cup of 
life to your thirsty lips. Oh ! thrust it not back. Mercy 
presents it — bleeding mercy, long-suffering Mercy. Pe- 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



219 



spise all other friendships, prove recreant to all other 
bargains, but despise God's love for your, dying soul — do 
not do that. There comes a crisis in a man's life, and the 
trouble is he does not know it is the crisis. I got a letter 
this week I thought to have brought it with me to 
church and read you a portion of it — in which a man 
says to me : 

*'I start out now to preach the gospel of righteousness 
and temperance to the people. Do yoil remember me ? 
I am the man who appeared at the close of the service 
when you were worshipping in the chapel after you 
came from Philadelphia, Do you remember at the close 
of the service a man coming up to you all a tremble with 
conviction, and crying out for mercy, and telling you he 
had a very bad business, and he thought he would change 
it ? That was the turning point in my history. I gave 
up my bad business. I gave my heart to God, and the 
desire to serve Him has grown upon me all these years, 
until now woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel." 
• That Sunday night, in the chapel, now the Lay College, 
was the turning point in that young man's history. This 
very Sabbath hour will be the turning point in the his- 
tory of a hundred young men in this house. God help 
us. I once stood on an anniversary platform with a 
clergyman*' who told this marvelous story. He said : 

"Thirty years ago two young men started out to attend 
Park Theater, New York, to see a play which made religion 
ridiculous and hypocritical. They had been brought up 
in Christian families. They started for the theater to 
see that vile play, and their early convictions came back 
upon them.. They felt it was not right to go, but still 
they went. They came to the door of the theater. One 
of the young men stopped and started for home, but re- 
turned and came up to the door, but had not the courage 



220 



SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN. 



to go in. He again started for home, and went home. 
The other young man went in. He went from one de- 
gree of temptation to another. Caught in the whirl of 
frivolity and sin, he sank lower and lower. He lost his 
business position. He lost his morals. He lost his soul. 
He died a dreadful death, not one star of mercy shining 
on it. I stand before .you to-day," said that minister, 
"to thank God that twenty years I have been per- 
mitted to preach the Gospel. I am the other young 
man." 

Oh ! you see that was the turning point — the one went 
back, the other went on. That great roaring world of 
New York life will soon break in upon you, young men. 
Will the wild wave dash out the impressions of this day 
as an ocean billow dashes letters out of the sand on the 
beach ? You need something better than this world can 
give you. I beat on your heart and it sounds hollow. 
You want something great and grand and glorious to fill 
it, and here is the religion that can do it. God save you ! 



THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 



221 



CHAPTEK XVI. 

THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 

Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. 
— Prov.i:20. 

We are all ready to listen to the voices of nature — the 
voices of the mountain, the voices of the sea, the voices 
of the storm, the voices of the star. As in some of the 
cathedrals in Europe, there is an organ at either end of 
the building, and the one instrument responds musically 
to the other, so in the great cathedral of nature, day 
responds to day, and night to night, and flower to flower, 
and star to star, in the great harmonies of the universe. 
The spring time is an evangelist in blossoms preaching 
of God's love; and the winter is a prophet — white 
bearded — denouncing woe against our sins. We are all 
ready to listen to the voices of nature ; but how few of 
us learn anything from the voices of the noisy and dusty 
street. You go to your mechanism, and to your work, 
and to your merchandise, and you come back again — and 
often with how different a heart you pass through the 
streets. Are there no things for us to learn from these 
pavements over which we pass? Are there no tufts 
of truth growing up between these cobblestones ? beat- 
en with the feet of toil, and pain, and pleasure, the 
slow tread of old age, and the quick step of childhood ? 
Aye, there are great harvests to be reaped; and this 
morning I thrust in the sickle because the harvest is 
ripe. ''Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voic^ 
in the streets. " 



222 



THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 



In the first place, the street impresses me with the 
fact that this life is a scene of toil and struggle. By ten 
o'clock every day the city is jarring with wheels, and 
shuffling with feet, and humming with voices, and cov- 
ered with the breath of smoke-stacks, and a-rush with 
traffickers. Once in awhile you find a man going along 
with folded arms and with leisure step, as though he had 
nothing to do ; but for the most part, as you find men 
going down these streets on the way to business, there is 
anxiety in their faces, as though they had some errand 
which must be executed at the first possible moment. 
You are jostled by those who have bargains to make and 
notes to sell. Up this ladder with a hod of bricks, out 
of this bank with a roll of bills, on this dray with a load 
of goods, digging a cellar, or shingling a roof, or shoeing 
a horse, or building a wall, or mending a watch, or bind- 
ing a book. Industry, with her thousand arms and 
thousand eyes, and thousand feet, goes on singing her 
song of work ! work ! work ! while the mills drum it, and 
the steam-whistles fife it. All this is not because men 
love toil. Some one remarked : ''Every man is as lazy 
as he can afford to be." But it is because necessitywith 
stern brow and with uplifted whip, stands over you 
ready whenever you relax your toil to make your should- 
ers sting with the lash. Can it be that passing up and 
down these streets on your way to work and business 
that you do not learn anything of the world's toil, and 
anxiety, and struggle ? Oh ! how many drooping hearts, 
how many eyes on the watch, how many miles traveled, 
how many burdens carried, how many losses suffered, 
how many battles fought, how many victories gained, 
how many defeats suffered, how many exasperations en- 
dured — what losses, what hunger, what wretchedness, 
what pallor, what disease, what agony, what despair ! 



THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 223 

Sometimes I have stopped at the corner of the street as 
the multitudes went hither and yon, and it has seemed 
to be a great pantomine, and as I looked upon it my 
heart broke. This great tide of human life that goes 
down the street is a rapid, tossed, and turned aside, and 
dashed ahead, and driven back — beautiful in its confu- 
sion, and confused in its beauty. In the carpeted aisles 
of the forest, in the woods from which the eternal shadow 
is never lifted, on .the shore of the sea over whose iron 
coast tosses the tangled foam sprinkling the cracked 
cliffs with a baptism of whirlwind and tempest, is the 
best place to study God ; but in the rushing, swarming, 
raving street is the best place to study man. Going down 
to your place of business and coming home again, I 
charge you look about — see these signs of poverty, of 
wretchedness, of hunger, of sin, of bereavement — and 
as you go through the streets, and come back through 
the .streets, gather up in the arms of your prayer all the 
sorrow, all the losses, all the suffering, all the bereave- 
ments of those whom you pass, and present them in 
prayer before an all-sympathetic God. In the great day 
of eternity there will be thousands of persons with whom 
you in this world never exchanged one word, will rise 
up and call you blessed ; and there will be a thousand 
fingers pointed at you in heaven, saying: "That is the 
man, that is the woman, who helpedme when I was hun- 
gry, and sick, and wandoj'ing, and lost, and heart-broken. 
That is the man, that is the woman, " and the blessing 
will come down upon you as Christ shall say: "I was 
hungry and ye fed me, I was naked and ye clothed me, 
I was sick and in prison and ye visited me ; inasmuch 
as ye did it to these poor waifs of the streets,«ye did it 
to Me." 

A-gain, the street impresses me with the fact that all 



224 



THE VOICES .OF THE STREET. 



classes and conditions of society must commingle. We 
sometimes culture a wicked exclusiveness. Intellect 
despises ignorance. Kefinement will have nothing to do 
with boorishness. Gloves hate the sunburned hand, and 
the high forehead despises the flat head ; and the trim 
hedgerow will have nothing to do with the wild corpse- 
wood, and the Athens hates Nazareth. This ought not 
to be so. The astronomer must come down from his 
starry revelry and help us in our navigation. The sur- 
geon must come -away from his study of the human 
organism and set our Jbroken bones. The chemist must 
come away from his laboratory, where he has been study- 
ing analysis and synthesis, and help us to understand 
the nature of the soils. I bless God that all classes of 
people are compelled to meet on the street. The glitter- 
ing coach-wheel clashes against the scavenger's cart. 
Fine robes run against the pedlar's pack. Kobust health 
meets wan sickness. Honesty confronts fraud. Every 
class of people meets every other class. Independence and 
modesty, pride and humility, purity and beastliness, 
frankness and hypocrisy, meeting on the same block, in 
the same street, in the same city. Oh ! that is what 
Solomon meant when he said; *'The rich and the poor 
meet together ; the Lord is the Maker of them all. " I 
like this democratic principle of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ which recognizes the fact that we stand befotre 
God on one and the same platform. Do not take on any 
airs ; whatever position you have gained in society, you 
are nothing but a man, born of the same parent, regen- 
erated by the same Spirit, cleansed in the same blood, to 
lie down in the same dust, to get up in the same resur- 
rection. It is high time that we all acknowledged not 
only the Fatherhood of God, but the brotherhood of man. 
Again, the street impresses me with the fact that it i§ 



THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 



225 



a very hard thing for a man to keep his heart right and 
to get to heaven. Infinite temptations spring upon us 
from these places of public concourse. Amid so much 
affluence how much temptation to covetousness, and to 
be discontented with our humble lot. Amid so many 
opportunities for over-reaching, what temptation to ex- 
tortion. Amid so much display, what temptation to 
vanity. Amid 'so many saloons of strong drink, what 
allurement to dissipation. In the maelstroms and hell 
gates of the street, how many make quick and eternal 
shipwreck. If a man-of-war comes back from a battle, 
and is towed into the navy-yard, we go down to look at 
the splintered spars and count the bullet-holes, and look 
with patriotic admiration on the flag that floated in vic- 
tory from the masthead. But that man is more of a 
curiosit;^ who has gone through thirty years of the sharp- 
shooting of business life, and yet sails on, victor over the 
temptations of the street. Oh ! how many have gone 
down under the pressure, leaving not so much as the 
patch of canvas to tell where they perished. They never 
had any peace. Their dishonesties kept tolling in their 
ears. If I had an axe, and could split open the beams 
of that fine house, perhaps I would find in the very 
heart of it a skeleton. In his very best wine there is a 
smack of poor man's sweat. Oh ! is it strange that when 
a man has devoured widows' houses, he is disturbed with 
indigestion? All the forces of nature are against him. 
The floods are ready to drown him, and the earthquake 
to swalloV him, and the fires to consume him, and the 
lightnings to smite him. Aye, all the armies of God 
are on the street, and in the day when the crowns of 
heaven are distributed, some of the brightest of them 
will be ofiven to those men who were faithful to God and 
faithful to the souls of others amid the marts of busi- 



226 



THE VOICES OF THE STEEET. 



ness, proving themselves the heroes of the street. Mighty 
were their temptations, mighty was their deliverance, 
and mighty shall be their triumph. 

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that life 
is full of pretension and sham. What subterfuge, what 
double dealing, what two-facedness. Do all people who 
wish you good morning really hope for you a happy day ? 
Do all the people who shake hands love each other? 
Are all those anxious about your health who inquire con- 
cerning it ? Do all want to see you who ask you to call ? 
Does all the world know half as much as it pretends to 
know?" Is there not many a wretched stock of goods 
with a brilliant store window ? Passing up and down 
these streets to your business and your work, are you not 
impressed with the fact that society is hollow, and that 
there are subterfuges and pretensions ? Oh ! how many 
there are who swagger and strut, and how few people 
who are natural and walk. While fops simper, and fools 
chuckle, and simpletons giggle, how few people are 
natural and laugh. The courtesan and the libertine go 
down the street in beautiful apparel, while within the 
heart there are volcanoes of passion consuming their life 
away. I say these things not to create in you incredulity 
or misanthropy, nor do I forget there are thousands of 
people a great deal better than they seem ; but I do not 
think any man so prepared for the conflict of this life 
until he knows this particular peril. Ehud comes pre- 
tending to pay his tax to king Eglon, and while he stands 
in front of the king, stabs him through with a dagger 
until the haft went in after the blade. Judas Iscariot 
kissed Christ. 

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that it is 
a great field for Christian charity. There ^are hunger 
and suffering, and want and wretchedness, in the coun- 



THE VOICES OF THE STKEET. 227 

try; but these evils chiefly congregate in our great cities. 
On every street crime prowls, and drunkenness staggers, 
and shame winks, and pauperism thrusts out its hand 
asking for alms. Here, want is most squalid and hun- 
ger is most lean. A Christian man, going along a street 
in New York, saw a poor lad, and he stopped and said : 
"My boy, do you know how to read and write?" The 
boy made no answer. The man asked the question twice 
and thrice. "Can you read and write?" and then the 
boy answered, with a tear plashing on the back of his 
hand. He said in defiance: "No, sir; I can't read nor 
write, neither. God, sir, don't want me to read and 
write. Didn't he take away my father so long ago I 
never remember to have seen him? and havn't I had to 
go along the streets to get something to fetch home to 
eat for the folks ? and didn't I, as soon as I could carry 
a basket, have to go out and pick up cinders, and never 
have no schooling, sir ? God don't want me to read, sir. 
I can't read, nor write neither." Oh, these poor wan- 
derers ? They have no chance. Born in degradation, as 
they get up from their hands and knees to walk, they take 
their first step on the road to despair. Let us go forth in 
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue them. Let us 
ministers not be afraid of soiling our black clothes while 
we go down on that mission. While we are tying an 
elaborate knot in our cravat, or while we are in the 
study rounding off some period rhetorically, we might 
be saving a soul from death, and hiding a multitude of 
sins. Christian laymen, go out on this work. If you 
are not willing to go forth yourself, then give of your 
means ; and if you are too lazy to go, and if you are too 
stingy \o help, then get out of the way, and hide your- 
self in the dens and caves of the earth, lest, when 
Christ's chariot comes along, the horses' hoofs trample 



228 



THE VOICES OP THE STREET. 



you into the mire. Beware lest the thousands of the 
destitute of your city, in the last great day, rise up and 
curse your stupidity and your neglect. Down to work! 
Lift them up ! One cold winter's day, as a Christian 
man was going along the Battery in New York, he saw 
a little girl seated at the gate, shivering in the cold. He 
said to her: ''My child, what do you sit there for, this 
cold day?" ''Oh," she replied, "I am waiting — I am 
waiting for somebody to come and take care of me.'* 
"Why?" said the man, "what makes you think any- 
body will come and take care of you?" "Oh," she said, 
♦ my mother died last week, and I was crying very 
much, and she said : 'Don't cry, my dear ; though I am 
gone and your father is gone, the Lord will send some- 
body to take care of you.' My mother never told a lie ; she 
said some one would come and take care of me, and I 
am waiting for them to come." yes, they are waiting 
for you. Men who have money, men who have influence, 
men of churches, men of great hearts, gather them in, 
gather them in. It is not the will of your Heavenly 
Father that one of these little ones should perish. 

Lastly, the street impresses me with the fact that all 
the people are looking forward. I see expectancy writ- 
ten on almost every face I meet between here and Ful- 
ton ferry, or walking the whole length of Broadway. 
Where you find a thousand people walking straight on, 
you only find one man stopping and looking back. The 
fact is, God made us all to look ahead, because we are 
immortal. In this tramp of the multitude on the 
streets, I hear the tramp of a great host, marching and 
marching for eternity. Beyond the of&ce, the store, the 
shop, the street, there is a world, populous and tremen- 
dous. Through God's grace, may you reach that blessed 
place. A great throng fills those boulevards and the 



THE VOICES OF THE STREET. 



229 



streets are arush with the chariots of conquerors. The 
inhabitants go up and down, but they never weep and 
they never toil. A river flows through that city, with 
rounded and luxurious banks, and trees of life laden with 
everlasting fruitage bend their branches to dip the crys- 
tal. No plumed hearse rattles over that pavement, for 
they are never sick. With immortal health glowing in 
every vein they know not how to die. Those towers of 
strength, those palaces of beauty, gleam in the light of 
a sun that never sets. Oh, heaven, beautiful heaven ! 
Heayen, where our friends are. They take no census in 
that city, for it is inhabited by "a multitude which no 
man can number. " Bank above rank. Host above host. 
Gallery above gallery, sweeping all around the heavens. 
Thousands of thousands. Millions of millions. Quad- 
rillions of quadrillions. Quintillions of quintillions. 
Blessed are they who enter in through the gate into that 
city. Oh ! start for it this morning. Through the blood 
of the great sacrifice of the Son of God,take up your march 
for heaven. The spirit and the bride say come, and who- 
soever will, let him come and take of the water of life 
"freely." Join this great throng who this morning, for 
the first time, espouse their faith in Christ. All the 
doors of invitation are open. "And I saw twelve gates 
and they were twelve pearls. " 



230 



HEBOES IN COMMON LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 
Thou, therefore, endure hardness.— II. Timothy ii: 3. 

Historians are not slow to acknowledge the merits of 
great military chieftains. We have the full-length por- 
traits of the Cromwells, the Washingtons, the Napoleons, 
and the Wellingtons of the world. History is not writ- 
ten in black ink, but with red ink of human blood. The. 
gods of human ambition do not drink from bowls made 
out of silver, or gold, or precious stones, but out of the 
bleached skulls of the fallen. But I am now to unroll 
before you a scroll of heroes that the world has never 
acknowledged ; those who faced no guns, blew no bugle- 
blast, conquered no cities, chained no captives to their 
chariot-wheels, and yet, in the great day of eternity, will 
stand higher than those whose names startled the nations ; 
and seraph, and rapt spirit, and archangel will tell their 
deeds to a listening universe. I mean the heroes of 
common, every-day life. 

In this roll, in the first place, I find all the heroes of 
the sick room. When Satan had failed to overcome 
Job, he said to God, "Put forth thy hand and touch his 
bones and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. " 
Satan had found out what we have all found out, that 
sickness is the greatest test of one's character. A man 
who can stand that can stand anything. To be shut in 
a room as fast as though it were a bastile. To be so 
nervous you cannot endure the tap of a child's foot, Tq 



HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 



231 



have luxuriant fruit, which tempts the appetite of the 
robust and healthy, excite our loathing and disgust when 
it first appears on the platter. To have the rapier of 
pain strike through the side, or across the temples, like a 
razor, or to put the foot into a vice, or throw the whole 
body into a blaze of fever. Yet there have been men 
and women, but more women than men, who have cheer- 
fully endured this hardness. Through years of exhaust- 
ing rhe\imatisms and excruciating neuralgias they have 
gone, and through bodily distresses that rasped the 
nerves, and tore the muscles, and paled the cheeks, and 
stooped the shoulders. By the dim light of the sick 
room taper they saw on their wall the picture of that 
land where the inhabitants are never sick. Through the 
dead silence of the night they heard the chorus of the 
angels. The cancer ate away her life from week to week 
and day to day, and she became weaker and weaker, and 
every "good night" was feebler than the "good night" 
before — ^yet never sad. The children looked up into her 
face and saw suffering transformed into a heavenly smile. 
Those who suffered on the battle-field, amid shot and 
shell, were not so much heroes and heroines as those who 
in the field hospital and in the asylum had fevers which 
no ice could cool and no surgery could cure. No shout 
of comrade to cheer them, mit numbness, and. aching, 
and homesickness — ^yet willing to suffer, confident in 
God, hopeful of heaven. Heroes of rheumatism. He- 
roes of neuralgia. Heroes of spinal complaint. Heroes 
of sick headache. Heroes of lifelong invalidism. He- 
roes and heroines. They shall reign for ever and for ever. 

Hark ! I catch just one note of the eternal anthem : 
**There shall be no more pain." Bless God for that. 

In this roll I also find the heroes of toil, who do their 
work uncomplainingly. It is comparatively easy to lead 



232 



HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 



a regiment into battle when you know that the whole 
nation will applaud the victory ; it is comparatively easy 
to doctor the sick when you know that your skill will be 
appreciated by a large company of friends and relatives ; 
it is comparatively easy to address an audience when in 
the gleaming eyes and the flushed cheeks you know that 
your sentiments are adopted; but to do sewing where 
you expect that the employer will come and thrust his 
thumb through the work to show how imperfect it is, or 
to have the whole garment thrown back on you to be 
done over again ; to build a wall and know there will be 
no one to say you did it well, but only a swearing em- 
ployer howling across the scaffold ; to work until your 
eyes are dim and your back aches, and your heart faints, 
and to know that if you stop before night your children 
will starve. Ah ! the sword has not slain so many as 
the needle. The great battle-fields of our last war were 
not Gettysburg and Shiloh and South Mountain. The 
great battle-fields of the last war were in the arsenals, 
and in the shops and in the attics, where women made 
army jackets for a sixpence. They toiled on until they 
died. They had no funeral eulogium, but in the name 
of my God, this morning, I enroll their names among 
those of whom the world -^vas not worthy. Heroes of 
the needle. Heroes of the sewing-machine. Heroes of 
the attic. Heroes of the cellar. Heroes and heroines. 
Bless God for them. 

In this roll I also find the heroes who have uncom- 
plainingly endured domestic injustices. There are men 
who for their toil and anxiety have no sympathy in their 
homes. Exhausting application to business gets them a 
livelihood, but an unfrugal wife scatters it. He is fret- 
ted at from the moment he enters the door until he 
comes out of it. The exasperations of business life 



HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 



233 



augmented by the exasperations of domestic life. Such 
men are laughed at, but they , have a heart-breaking 
trouble, and they would have long ago gone into appal- 
ling dissipations but for the grace of God. Society to- 
day is strewn with the wrecks of men who under the 
north-east storm of domestic infelicity have been driven 
on the rocks. There are tens of thousands of drunkards 
in this country to-day, made such by their wives. That 
is not poetry ! That is prose ! But the wrong is gener- 
ally in the opposite direction. You would not have to 
go far to find a wife whose life is a perpetual martyrdom. 
Something heavier than a stroke of the fist ; unkind 
words, staggerings home at midnight, and constant mal- 
treatment, which have left her only a wreck of what she 
was on that day when in the midst of a brilliant assem- 
blage the vows were taken, and full organ played the 
wedding march, and the carriage rolled away with the 
benediction of the people. What was the burning of 
Latimer and Kidley at the stake compared with this ? 
Those men soon became unconscious in the fire, but here 
is a fifty years* martyrdom, a fifty years' putting to death, 
yet uncomplaining. No bitter words when the rollicking 
companions at two o'clock in the morning pitch the hus- 
band dead drunk into the front entry. No bitter words 
when wiping from the swollen brow the blood struck 
out in a midnight carousal. Bending over the battered 
and bruised form of him who, when he took her from 
her father's home, promised love, and kindness, and pro- 
tection, yet nothing but sympathy, and prayers, and 
forgiveness before they are asked for. No bitter words 
when the family Bible goes for rum, and the pawn- 
broker's shop gets the last decent dress. Some day, de- 
siring to evoke the story of her sorrows, you say : **Well, 
how are you getting along now ?" and rallying her trem- 



234 



HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 



bling voice, and quieting her quivering lip, she says : 
**Pretty well, I thank you, pretty well." She never will 
tell you. In the delirium of her last sickness she may 
tell all the secrets of her lifetime, but she will not tell 
that. Not until the books of eternity are opened on the 
thrones of judgment will ever be known what she has 
sujffered. Oh ! ye who are twisting a garland for the 
victor, put it on that pale brow. When she is dead the 
neighbors will beg linen to make her a shroud, and she 
will be carried out in a plain box with no silver plate to 
tell her years, for she has lived a thousand years of trial 
and anguish. The gamblers and swindlers who destroyed 
her husband will not come to the funeral. One carriage 
will be enough for that funeral — one carriage to carry 
the orphans and the two Christian women who presided 
over the obsequies. But there is a flash, and the open- 
ing of a celestial door, and a shout : ^'Lift up your head, 
ye everlasting gate, and let her come in ! " And Christ 
will step forth and say: *'Come in! ye suffered with 
me on earth, be glorified with me in heaven." What is 
the highest throne in heaven? You say: "The throne 
of the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb." No doubt 
about it. What is the next highest throne in heaven ? 
While I speak it seems to me that it will be the throne 
of the drunkard's wife, if she, with cheerful patience, 
endured all her earthly torture. Heroes and heroines. 

I find also in this roll the heroes of Christian charity. 
We all admire the George Peabodys and the James 
Lenoxes of the earth, who give tens and hundreds of 
thousands of dollars to good objects. A few days ago 
Moses H. Grinnell was buried, and the most significant 
thing about the ceremonies, as I read them, was that 
there was no sermon and no oration ; a plain hymn, a 
prayer, and a benediction. Well, I said, that is very 



* 



HEROES IN COMMON LtfE. 



235 



beautiful. All Christendom pronounces the eulogium 
of Moses H. Grinnell, and the icebergs that stand as 
monuments to Franklin and his men will stand as 
the monuments of this great merchant, and the sunlight 
that plays upon the glittering cliff will write his epitaph. 
But I am speaking this morning of those who, out of 
their pinched poverty, help others — of such men as those 
Christian missionaries at the West, who are living on 
$250 a year that they may proclaim Christ to the peo- 
ple, one of them, writing to the secretary in New York, 
saying:"! thank you for that |25. Until yesterday we 
have had no meat in our house for three months. We 
have suffered terribly. My children have no shoes this 
winter." And of those people who have only a half loaf 
of bread, but give a piece of it to others who are hun- 
grier ; and of those who have only a scuttle of coal, but 
help others to fuel ; and of those who have only a dollar 
in their pocket, and give twenty-five cents to somebody 
else ; and of that father who wears a shabby coat, and of 
that mother who wears a faded dress, that^their children 
may be well apparelled. You call them paupers, or rag- 
muffins, or emigrants. I call them heroes and heroines. 
You and I may not know where they live, or what their 
name is. God knows, and they have more angels hover- 
ing over them than you and I have, and they will have 
a higher seat in heaven. 

They may have only a cup of cold water to give a poor 
traveler, or may have only picked a splinter from under 
the nail of a child's finger, or have put only two mites 
into the treasury, but the Lord knows them. Consider- 
ing what they had, they did more than we have ever 
done, and their faded dress will become a white robe, 
and the small room will be an eternal mansion, and the 
old hat will be a coronet of victory, and all the applause 



236 



HEBOES IN COMMON LIFE. 



of earth and all the shouting of heaven will be drowned 
out when God rises up to give his reward to those hum- 
ble workers in his kingdom, and to say to them : "Well 
done, good and faithful servant." You have all seen or 
heard of the ruin of Melrose Abbey. I suppose in some 
respects it is the most exquisite ruin on earth. And yet, 
looking at it I was not so impressed — ^you may set it 
down to bad taste — but I was not so deeply stirred as I was 
at a tombstone at the foot of that abbey — ^the tombstone 
placed by Walter Scott over the grave of an old man 
who had served him for a good many years in his house 
— the inscription most significant, but I defy any man 
to stand there and read it without tears coming into his 
eyes — ^the epitaph : "Well done, good and jfaithful ser- 
vent." Oh ! when our work is over, will it be found that 
because of anything, we have done for God, or the church, 
or suffering humanity, that such an inscription is ap- 
propriate for us ? God grant it. 

Who are those who were bravest and deserved the 
greatest monument — ^Lord Claverhouse and his burly 
soldiers or John Brown, the Edinburgh carrier and his 
wife ? Mr. Atkins, the persecuted minister of Jesus Christ 
in Scotland, was secreted by J ohn Brown and his wife, and 
Claverhouse rode up one day with his armed men and 
shouted in front of the house. John Brown's little girl 
came out. He said to her: *'Well, miss, is Mr. Atkins 
here ?" She made no answer, for she could not betray the 
minister of the Gospel. **Ha !" Claverhouse said, "then 
you are a chip of the old block, are you ? I have some- 
thing in my pocket for you. It is a nosegay. Some 
people call it a thumbscrew, but I call it a nosegay." 
And he got off his horse, and he put it on the little girPs 
hand, and begin to turn it until the bones cracked, and 
she cried. He said, "don't cry, don't cry ; this isn't a 



HEKOES IN COMMON LIFE. 



237 



thumbscrew; this is a nosegay." And they heard the 
child's cry, and the father and mother came out, and 
Claverhouse said, "Ha ! it seems that you three have 
laid your holy heads together determined to die like all 
the rest of your hypocritical, canting, snivelling crew ; 
rather than give up good Mr. Atkins, pious Mr. Atkins, 
you would die. I have a telescope with me that will 
impro^ve your vision," and he pulled out a pistol. "Now," 
he said, "you old pragmatical, lest you should catch 
cold in this cold morning of Scotland, and for the honor 
and safety of the king, to say nothing of the glory of 
God and the good of our souls, I will proceed simply 
and in the neatest and most expeditious style possible to 
blow your brains out." John Brown fell upon his knees 
and began to pray. "Ah !" said Claverhouse, ''look out, 
if you are going to pray; steer clear of the king, the 
council, and Eichard Cameron." "0 ! Lord," said John 
Brown, * 'since it seems to be thy will that I should leave 
this world for a world where I can love thee better and 
serve thee more, I put this poor widow woman and these 
helpless, fatherless children into thy hands. We have 
been together in peace a good while, but now we must 
look forth to a better meeting in heaven, and as for these 
poor creatures, blindfolded and infatuated, that stand 
before me, convert them before it be too late, and may 
they who have sat in judgment in this lonely place on 
this blessed morning, upon me, a poor, defenceless fel- 
low-creature — may they, in the last judgment find that 
mercy which they have refused to me, thy most unwor- 
thy, but faithful servant. Amen." He rose up and said, 
*'Isabel, the hour has come of which I spoke to you on 
the morning when I proposed hand and heart to you ; 
and are you willing now, for the love of God, to let me 
die?" She put her arms around him and said: — "The 



^38 



fflEEOES IN COMMON LIFE. 



Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be 
the name of the Lord!" "Stop that snivelling," said 
Claverhouse. "I have had enough of it. Soldiers, do 
your work. Take aim! Fire!" and the head of John 
Brown was scattered on the ground. While the wife 
was gathering up in her apron the fragments of her hus- 
band's head — gathering them up for burial — Claverhouse 
looked into her face and oaid, *'Now, my good woman, 
how do you feel now about your bonnie man?" "Oh !" 
she said, "1 always thought weel of him ; he has been 
very good to me : i had no reason for thinking anything 
but weei of him, and I think oetter of him now." Oh! 
what a grand thing it will be in the last day to see God 
pick out his heroes and heroines. "Who are those pau- 
pers of eternity trudgmg off from the gates of heaven ? 
Who are they ? The Lord Claverhouses and the Herods 
and those who had sceptres, and crowns, and thrones, 
but they lived tor their own aggrandisement, and they 
broke the heart of nations. Heroes of earth, but pau- 
pers in eternity. I beat the drums of their eternal des- 
pair. Woe ! woe ! woe ! 

But there is great excitement in heaven. Why those 
long processions ? Why the booming of that great bell 
in the tower ? It is coronation day in heaven. 

Who are those rising on the thrones, with crowns of 
eternal royalty ? They must have been great people on 
earth, world-renowned people. No. They taught in a 
ragged school. Taught in a ragged school ! Is that all ? 
That is all. Who are those souls waving sceptres of 
eternal dominion ? Why, they were little children who 
waited on invalid mothers. That all ? That is all. She 
was called "Little Mary" on earth. She is an empress 
now. Who are that great multitude on the highest 
thrones of heaven ? Who are they ? Why, they fed the 



HEROES IN COMMON LlfE. 230 



hungry, they clothed the naked, they healed the sick, they 
comforted the heart-broken. They never found any rest 
until they put their head down on the pillow of the sep- 
ulchre. God watched them. , God laughed defiance at 
.the enemies who put their heels hard down on these His 
dear children ; and one day the Lord struck His hand so 
hard on His thigh thai the omnipotent sword rattled in 
the buckler, as He said : "I am their God, and no weapon 
formed against them shall prosper. " What harm can 
the world do you when the Lord Almighty with un- 
sheathed sword fights for you. " 

I preach this sermon this morning in comfort. Go 
home to the place just where God has put you to play 
the hero or. the heroine. Do not envy any man his 
money, or his applause, or his social position. Do not 
envy any woman her wardrobe, or her exquisite appear- 
ance. Be the hero or the heroine. If there be no flour 
in the house, and you do not know where your children 
are to get bread, listen, and you will hear something 
tapping against the window-pane. Go to the window 
and you will find it is the beak of a raven, and open the 
window, and there will fly in the messenger that fed 
Elijah. Do you think that the God who grows the cot- 
ton of the South will let you freeze for lack of clothes ? 
Do you think that the God who allowed the disciples on 
-Sunday morning to go into the grain-field, and then take 
the grain and rub it in their hands and eat — do you 
think God will let you starve ? Did you ever hear the 
experience of that old man : ''I have been young, and 
now am I old, yet have I never seen the righteous for- 
saken, or his seed begging bread?" Get up out of your 
discouragement, ! troubled soul, ! sewing woman, 
! man, kicked and cuffed by unjust employers, ! ye 
who are hard beset in the battle of life and know not 



240 



HEROES IN COMMON LIFE. 



which way to turn, ! you bereft one, ! you sick one 
with complaints you have told to no one, come and get 
the comfort of this subject. Listen to our great Cap- 
tain's cheer: "To him that overcometh will I give to 
eat of the fruit of the tree of life which is in the midst 
of the Paradise of God, " 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



241 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 

Then I went up in the night by the brook and viewed the wall, 
and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so re- 
turned.— Nehemiah ii: 15. 

A dead city is more suggestive than a living city — 
past Rome than present Rome — ruins rather than 
newly frescoed cathedral. But the best time to visit a 
ruin is by moonlight. The Coliseum is far more fasci- 
nating to the traveler after sundown than before. You 
may stand by daylight amid the monastic ruins of Mel- 
rose Abbey, and study shafted oriel, and rosetted stone 
and muUion, but they throw their strongest witchery by 
moonlight. Some of you remember what the enchanter 
of Scotland said in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel;" 

*'Wouldst thou view fair Melrose aright. 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 

Washington Irving describes the Andalusian moon-" 
light upon the Alhambra ruins as amounting to an en- 
chantment. My text presents you Jerusalem in ruins. 
The tower down. The gates down. The walls down. 
Everything down. Nehemiah on horseback, by moon- 
light looking upon the ruins. While he rides, there are 
some friends on foot going with him, for they do not 
want the many horses to disturb the suspicions of the 
people. These people do not know the secret of Nehe- 
miah's heart, but they are going as a sort of body-guard. 



242 



THE MIDNIGHT HOUSEMAID. 



I hear the clicking hoofs of the horse on which Nehe- 
miah rides, as he guides it this way and that, into this 
gate and out of that, winding through that gate amid 
the dehris of once great Jerusalem. Now the horse 
comes to a dead halt at the tumbled masonry where he 
cannot pass. Now he shies off at the charred timbers. 
Now he comes along where the water under the moon- 
light flashes from the mouth of the brazen dragon after 
which the gate was named. Heavy-hearted Nehemiah ! 
Eiding in and out, now by his old home desolated, now 
by the defaced Temple, now amid the scars of the city 
that had gone down under battering-ram and conflagra- 
tion. The escorting party knows not what Nehemiah 
means. Is he getting crazy ? Have his own personal 
sorrows, added to the sorrows of the nation, unbalanced 
his intellect ? Still the midnight exploration goes on. Ne- 
hemiah on horseback rides through the fish gate, by the 
tower of the furnaces, by the king's pool, by the dragon well, 
in and out, in and out, until the midnight ride is com- 
pleted, and Nehemiah dismounts from his horse, and to 
the amazed and confounded and incredulous body-guard, 
declares the dead secret of his heart when he says : 
"Come, now, let us build Jerusalem." "What, Nehe- 
iniah, have you any money?" "No." "Have you any 
kingly authority?" "No." "Have you any eloquence?" 
"No." Yet that midnight, moonlight ride of Nehemiah 
resulted in the glorious rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. 
The people knew not how the thing was to be done, but 
with great enthusiasm they cried out: "Let us rise up 
now and build the city." Some people laughed and said 
it could not be done. Some people were infuriate and 
offered physical violence, saying the thing should not be 
done. But the workmen went right on, standing on the 
wall, trowel in one hand, sword in the other, until the 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



243 



work was glorionsly completed. At that very time, in 
Greece, Xenophon was writing a history, and Plato was 
making philosophy, and Demosthenes was rattling his 
rhetorical thunder; but all of them together did not do 
so much for the world as this midnight, moonlight ride 
of praying, courageous, homesick, close-mouthed Ne- 
hemiah. 

My subject first impresfies me with the idea what an 
intense thing is church affection. Seize the bridle of that 
horse and stop Nehemiah. Why are you risking your 
life here in the night? Your horse will stumble over 
these ruins and fall on you. Stop this useless exposure 
of your life. No; Nehemiah will not stop. He at last 
tells us the whole story. He lets us know he was an 
exile in a far distant land, and he was a servant, a cup- 
bearer in the palace of Artaxerxes Longiuianus, and one 
day, while he was handing the cup of wine to the king, 
the king said to him, "What is the matter with you? 
Vou are not sick. I know you must have some great 
troul)le. Wiiat is the matter with you?" Then he told 
the king how that beloved Jerusalem was broken down ; 
how that his father's tomb had been desecrated; how 
that the Temple had been dishonored and defaced; how 
that the walls were scattered and broken. "Well," says 
King Artaxerxes, " what do you want?" " Well," said 
the cup-bearer Nehemiah, " I want to go home. I want 
to fix up the grave of my father. I want to restore the 
beauty of the Temple. I want to rebuild the masonry 
of the city wall. Besides, I want passports so that 1 
shall not be liindered in my journey. And besides that," 
as you will find in the context, " I want an order on the 
man who keeps your forest for just so much timber as I 
may need for the rebuilding of the city." "How long 
flhall you be gone?" said the king. The time of absence 



844 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



is arranged. In hot haste this seeming adventurer cornea 
to Jerusalem, and in my text we find him on horseback, 
in the midnight, riding around the ruins. It is through 
the spectacles of this scene that we discover the ardent 
attachment of Nehemiah for sacred Jerusalem, which in 
all ages has been the type of the church of God, our 
Jerusalem, which we love just as much as Nehemiah 
loved his Jerusalem. The fact is that you love the 
church of God so much that there is no spot on earth so 
sacred, unless it be your own fireside. The church has 
been to you so much comfort and illumination that there 
is nothing that makes you so irate as to have it talked 
against. If there have been times when you have been 
carried into captivity by sickness, you longed for the 
Church, our holy Jerusalem, just as much as Nehemiah 
longed for his Jerusalem, and the first day you came out 
fou came to the house of the Lord. When the temple 
was in ruins, as ours was five years ago, like Nehemiah, 
you walked around and looked at it, and in the moon- 
light you stood listening if you could not hear the voice 
of the dead organ, the psalm of the expired Sabbaths. 
What Jerusalem was to Nehemiah, the Church of God 
is to you. Sceptics and infidels may scoff at the Church 
as an obsolete affair, as a relic of the dark ages, as a con- 
vention of goody-goody people, but all the impression 
they have ever made on y )ur mind against the Church of 
God is absolutely nothing. You would make more sac- 
rifices for it to-day than for any other institution, and if 
it were needful you would die in its defence. You can 
take the words of the kingly poet as he said: " If I 
forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
cunning." You understand in your own experience the 
pathos, the home-sickness, the coarage, the holy entha- 



THE MIDNIGHT HOBSEM1.N. 



245 



Biasm of Neliemiah in his midnight moonlight ride 
around the ruins of his beloved J erusalem. 

Again, my text impresses me with the fact that, before 
reconstruction, there must be an exploration of ruins. 
Why was not Nehemiah asleep under the covers? Why 
was not his horse stabled in the midnight? Let the police 
of the city arrest this midnight rider, out on some mis- 
chief. No. Nehemiah is going to rebuild the city, and 
he is making the preliminary exploration. In this gate, 
out that gate, east, west, north, south. All through the 
ruins. The ruins must be explored before the work of 
reconstruction can begin. The reason that so many 
people in this day, apparently converted, do not stay 
converted is because they did not first explore the ruins 
of their own heart. The reason that there are so many 
professed Christians who in this day lie and forge and 
steal, and commit adultery, and go to the penitentiary, 
is because they first do not learn the ruin of their own 
heart. They have not found out that " the heart is de- 
ceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." The} 
had an idea that they were almost right, and they built 
religion as a sort of extension, as an ornamental cupola. 
There was a superstructure of religion built on a sub- 
stratum of unrepented sins. The trouble with a good 
deal of modern theology is that instead of building on 
the right foundation, it builds on the debris of an unre- 
regenerated nature. They attempt to rebuild Jerusalem 
before, in the midnight of conviction, they have seen 
the ghastliness of the ruin. They have such a poor 
foundation for their religion that the first north-east 
storm of temptation blows them down. I have no faith 
in a man's conversion if he is not converted in the old- 
fashioned way — John Bunyan's way, John Wesley's way, 
John Calvin's way, Paul's way, Christ's way, God's way. 



246 



THE MIDNIGHT HOUSEMAN. 



A dentist said to me a few days ago, ^ Does that hurt?" 
Said I, " Of course it hurts. It is in jour business aa 
in my profession. We have to hurt before we can help." 
You will never understand redemption until jou under- 
stand ruin. A man tells me that some one is a member 
of the church. It makes no impression on mj mind at 
all. I simply want to know whether he was converted 
in the old-fashioned way, or whether he was converted in 
the new-fashioned way. If he was converted in the old- 
fashioned way he will stand. If he was converted in the 
new-fashioned way he will not stand. That is all there is 
about it. A man comes to me to talk about religion. 
The first question I ask him is, " Do you feel yourself 
to be a sinner f If he say, '*Well, I — yes," the hesi- 
tancy makes me feel that that man wants a ride on 'Ne- 
hemiah's horse by midnight through the ruins—in by 
the gate of his affections, out by the gate of his will; and 
before he has got through with that midnight ride he 
will drop the reins on the horse's neck, and will take his 
right hand and smite on his heart and say, "God be mer- 
ciful to me a sinner;" and before he has stabled his 
horse he will take his feet out of the stirrups, and he 
will slide down on the ground, and he will kneel, crying, 
" Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy loving- 
kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender 
mercies; blot out my transgressions, for I acknowledge 
my transgressions, and my sins are ever before thee." 
Ah, my friends, you see this is not a complimentary gos- 
pel. That is what makes some people so mad. It comes 
to a man of a million dollars, and impenitent in his sins, 
and says, " You're a pauper." It comes to a woman of 
fairest cheek, who has never repented, and says, "You're 
a sinner." It comes to a man priding himself on hia 
independence, and says, " You're bound hand and foot by 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



24T 



the devil." It comes to our entire race and says, 
" You're a ruin, a ghastly ruin, an illimitable ruin." 
Satan sometimes says to me, " Why do you preach that 
truth? Why don't you preach a gospel with no repen- 
tance in it? Why don't you flatter men's hearts so that 
you make them feel all right? Why don't you preach a 
humanitarian gospel with no repentance in it, saying 
nothing about the ruin, talking all the time about 
redemption? Instead of preaching to five thousand 
you might preach to twenty thousand, for there would 
be four times as many who would come to hear 
a popular truth as to hear an unpopular truth, and you 
liave voice enough to make them hear." I say, "Get 
thee behind me, Satan." I would rather lead five souls 
into heaven than twenty thousand into hell. The re- 
demption of the gospel is a perfect farce if there is no 
ruin. " The whole need not a physician, but they that 
are sick." "If any one^ though he be an angel from 
heaven, preach any other gospel than this," says th% 
apostle, " let him be accursed, "v There must be the mid- 
night ride over the ruins before Jerusalem can be built 
There must be the clicking of the hoofs before there can 
be the ring of the trowels. 

Again. My subject gives me a specimen of busy and 
triumphant sadness. If there was any man in the 
world who had a right to mope and give up everything 
as lost, it was Nehemiah. You say, " He was a cup- 
bearer in the palace of Shushan, and it was a grand 
place." So it was. The hall of that palace was two hundred 
feet square, and the roof hovered over thirty-six marble 
pillars, each pillar sixty feet high; and the intense blue 
of the sky, and the deep green of the forest foliage, and 
the white of the driven snow, all hung trembling in the 
upholstery. But, my friend8,you know very we) I that fine 



243 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



architecture will not put down home-sicknesB. Yet Nehe- 
miah did not give up. Then when you see him going 
among these desolated streets; and by these dismantled 
towers, and by the torn-up grave of his father, you 
would suppose that he would have been disheartened, 
and that he would have dismounted from his horse and 
gone to his room and said: " Woe is me! My father's 
grave is torn up. The temple is dishonored. The walls 
are broken down. I have no money with which to 
rebuild. I wish I had never been born. I wish I were 
dead." Not so says Nehemiah. Although he had a grief 
so intense that it excited the commentary of his king, 
yet that penniless, expatriated Nehemiah rouses himself 
up to rebuild the city. He gets his permission of ab- 
sence. He gets his passports. He hastens away to 
Jerusalem. By night on horseback he rides through the 
ruins. He overcomes the most ferocious opposition. He 
arouses the piety and patriotism of the people, and in 
less than two months, namely, in fifty-two days, Jerusa- 
lem was rebuilt That's what I call busy and triumpant 
sadness. 

My friends, the whole temptation is with you when 
you have trouble, to do just the opposite to the behavior 
of Nehemiah, and that is to give up. You say: "I 
have lost my child and can never smile again." You 
say, "I have lost my property, and I never can repair my 
fortunes." You say, "I have fallen into sin, and I never can 
start again for a new life." If Satan can make you form 
that resolution, and make you keep it, he has ruined you 
Trouble is not sent to crush you, but to arouse you, to 
animate you, to propel you. The blacksmith does not 
thrust the iron into the forge, and then blow away with 
the bellows, and then bring the hot iron out on the anvil 
and beat with stroke after stroke to rnin the iron, but to 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



249 



prepare it for a better uBe. Oh that the Lord Gkxi of 
Nehemiah would rouse up all broken-hearted people to 
rebuild. Whipped, betrayed, shipwrecked, imprisoned, 
Paul went right on. The Italian martyr Algerius sits 
in his dungeon writing a letter, and he dates it "From 
the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison." That is 
what 1 call triumphant sadness. I knew a mother who 
buried her babe on Friday and on Sabbath appeared in 
the house of God and said: "Give me a class; give me a 
Sabbath-school class. I have no child now left me, and 
I would like to have a class of little children. Give me 
real poor children. Give me a class off the back street." 
That, I say, is beautiful. That is triumphant sadness- 
At three o'clock this afternoon, in a beautiful parlor in 
Philadelphia — a parlor pictured and statuetted — there will 
be from ten to twenty destitute children of the street. 
It has been so every Sabbath afternoon at three o'clock 
for sixteen years. These destitute children receive re- 
ligious instruction, concluding with cakes and sand- 
wiches. How do I know that that has been going on 
for sixteen years! I know it in this way. That was the 
lirst home in Philadelphia where I was called to comfort 
a great sorrow. They had a splendid boy, and he had 
been drowned at Long Branch. The father and mother 
almost idolized the boy, and the sob and shriek of that 
father and mother as they hung over the coffin resound 
in my ears to-day. There seemed to be no use of pray- 
ing, for when I knelt down to pray, the outcry in the 
room drowned out all the prayer. But the Lord com- 
forted that sorrow. They did not forget their trouble. 
If you should go this snowy afternoon into Laurel Hill, 
you would find a monument with the word "Walter" 
inscribed upon it, and a wreath of fresh flowers 
around the name. I think there has not been an hour 



250 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAK. 



in sixteen years, winter or summer, when there was not 
a wreath of fresh flowers around Walter's name. But 
the Christian mother who sends ^ those flowers there, hav- 
ing no child left, Sabbath afternoons mothers ten or 
twenty of the lost ones of the street. That is beautiful 
That is what I call busy and triumphant sadness. Here 
is a man who has lost his property. He does not go to 
hard drinking. He does not destroy his own life. He 
comes and says, "Harness me for Christian work. My 
money's gone. I have no treasures on earth. I want 
treasures in heaven. I have a voice and a heart to serve 
God.'' You say that that man has failed. He has not 
failed — he has triumphed. Oh, I wish I could persuade 
all the people who have any kind of trouble never to 
give up. I wish they would look at the midnight rider 
of the text, and that the four hoofs of that beast on 
which Nehemiah rode might cut to pieces all your dis- 
couragements, and hardships, and trials. Give upl 
Who is going to give up, when on the bosom of God he 
can have all his troubles hushed? Give upl Never 
think of giving up. Are you borne down with poverty! 
A little child was found holding her dead mother's hand 
in the darkness of a tenement-house, and some one com 
ing in, the little girl looked up, while holding her dead 
mother's hand, and said: "Oh, I do wish that God had 
made more light for poor folks. " My dear, God will be 
your light, God will be your shelter, God will be your 
home. Are you borne down with the bereavements of 
life! Is the house lonely now that the child is gone! 
Do not give up. Think of what the old sexton said 
when the minister asked him why he put so much care 
on the little graves, in the cemetery — so much more car© 
than on the larger graves, and the old sexton said "Sir, 
yon know that ^of such is the kingdom of heaven,' and 



THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN. 



251 



I think the Savior is pleased when He sees bo much 
white clover growing around these little graves." But 
when the minister pressed the old sexton for a more flat- 
isfactory answer, the old sexton said: "Sir, about these 
larger graves, I don't know who are the Lord's saints 
and who are not; but you know, sir, it is clean different 
with the bairns." Oh, if you have had that keen, ten- 
der, indescribable sorrow that comes from the loss of a 
child, do not give up. The old sexton was right. It is 
all well with the bairns. Or, if you have sinned, if you 
have sinned grievously — sinned until you have been cast 
out by the Church, sinned until you have been cast out 
by society, do not give up. Perhaps there may be in 
this house one that could truthfully utter the lamenta- 
tion of another: 

«*Once I waa pure as the snow, but I fell- 
Pell like a snowflake, from heaven to hell— 
Fell) to be trampled as filth in the street- 
Fell, to be scoffed at, spit on, and beat; 
Praying, cursing, wishing to die. 
Selling my soul to whoever would buy. 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread. 
Hating the living, and fearing the dead.** 

Do not give up. One like unto the Son of God comet 
Uf you to-day, saying, "Go and sin no more;" while He 
cries out to your assailants, "Let him that is without sin 
cast the first stone at her." Oh I there is no reason why 
any one in this house, by reason of any trouble or sin, 
should give up. Are you a foreigner, and in a strange 
land! >Tehemiah was an exile. Are yon penniless? 
Nehemiah was poor. Are you homesick! Kehemiah 
was homesick. Are you broken-hearted? '^"ehemiah 
was broken-hearted. But just see him in the text, riding 
along the sacriieged grave of his £ftther, and by the 



252 



THE MTDNIOHT Ho±cSEMjw-«. 



dragon well, and through the fish gate, and by the kingV 
pool, in and out, in and out, the moonlight falling on 
the broken masonry, which throws a long shadow at 
which the horse shies, and at the same time that moon- 
light kindling up the features of this man till you see 
not only the mark of sad reminiscence, but the courage 
the hope, the enthusiasm of a man who knows that Jeru- 
salem will be rebuilded. I pick you up to-day, out of 
your sins and out of your sorrow, and I put you againgt 
the warm heart of Christ. "The eternal God is thj 
refuge, and underneath are the everlasting armi." 



pi7araol7's Jreajure. 



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Illustrated. 



"While the story is perfectly unique in its charac- 
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The story is a revelation of marvelous and startling 
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DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., Publishers, 

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